


Head in the Water

by georgianablythe16



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-06-04 11:13:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 57,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6655675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/georgianablythe16/pseuds/georgianablythe16
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been ten years since Emma Swan set foot in Storybrooke, Maine. After a nasty break up and a job offer from her brother, she heads back to her hometown. Hoping to find a new place, one she can call home, she begins searching for an apartment. A simple enough plan, until she finds herself face to face with the first man she ever loved: Killian Jones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first fan fiction and I'm super excited to share it all with you! Special thanks to the-lady-of-misthaven for all her help betaing! Enjoy! I'll try to post weekly if possible!

Emma Swan hates apartment hunting. _Hates_ it.

She hates having to weed through dozens and dozens of listings. She hates the generic and vague descriptions. She hates setting price points and distance requirements, selecting the number of bedrooms, or bathrooms, or square feet. Mostly, she hates browsing website after website, from apartmentguide.com to craigslist, until three in the morning, only to end up apartment-less _and_ pissed off.

After a week of living with her brother and his wife, Emma’s had enough. She loves Mary Margaret and David, but she doesn’t know if she can handle their lovey-dovey, fairytale romance for another day. To say she’s relieved, when she finds the ad in a local newspaper, is an understatement.

It seems odd that the apartment listing was in the newspaper rather than online. Then again she’s not in Boston anymore, but tiny, middle of nowhere Storybrooke. Her old hometown, if she can even call it that. She’d only spent her junior and senior year of high school there, but they were the two best years of her youth, up until the end at least.

Emma frowns at the thought of her senior year, shaking her head to dispel the unwanted memories. She’d moved back to Storybrooke to escape a shitty situation, to feel like she belonged somewhere again. Moving back didn’t mean that she wanted to relive the bad parts of her past. Emma can’t focus on what she did wrong anymore, she’s too busy doing something _right_ for once. Starting with finding a new place, maybe even the place listed in the ad that sits in front of her.

The listing is an odd one, to say the least. The language is a little too flowery and over-the-top for her taste but there’s a hint of humor in it that makes her smile.

           

_Apartment for Lease_

_Do you ever fancy a midnight drink? Maybe a quaint view of the sea? Do you ever set your eyes upon a tavern, and yearn not just for a few libations, but for a home?_

_Well look no further, because all of your fervent desires are about to come true._

_The Jolly Roger Tavern is looking for a new tenant to occupy the studio apartment above the bar. Full kitchen and bath, view of the magnificent Maine coast, and the lovely company of a charming, handsome, and mildly hilarious bartender/landlord. Price is set at 350 per month. Neighboring tenant has proven quiet and willing to share conversation, and even a nip of rum if asked nicely._

_Any inquiries about the listing should contact the landlord through text rather than call._

 

Emma smiles, nearly ecstatic with the apartment that so far appears to be her diamond in the rough. The price is reasonable, the location not far from the sheriff’s station, it’s close to the ocean, and best of all: _the price is reasonable._

She finds the number at the bottom of the ad and shoots off a quick text. It’s straight to the point, saying she’s interested in the apartment, and would like to drop by and see it. Figuring it doesn’t matter until she ends up meeting the guy in person, she doesn’t give her name or any other personal details. It’s not like they’ll be signing a contract or negotiating a deal over text or anything.

The reply comes an hour later.

**_Absolutely. You can drop by right before opening, if you’d like. 10 a.m. next Saturday morning sound good to you?_ **

_Sounds great, see you then._

Emma breathes a sigh of relief. After what feels like months of searching, and consequently months of failing, she finally feels like she’s on the right path toward finding a home; _her_ home. The thought sends a pleasant chill down her spine, like it’s fate or destiny, or some other equally sappy kind of bullshit, but she quickly shakes the idea off, and continues to bask in the glow of a perfect future on the horizon.

A week later, at 9:58 a.m. Emma parks her yellow bug outside of _The Jolly Roger Tavern,_ and finds herself staring at the establishment.

The outside of the building is gorgeous; in fact the whole street is breathtaking. She’s in the older part of town, the old Main Street, from when Storybrooke was first established. The streets are cobbled, the sidewalks cracked, but the edifices of the buildings are the originals, all sporting intricate woodwork in deep, vibrant colors.

_The Jolly Roger Tavern_ is on the historical registry, but when Emma was last in town it was called _The Storybrooke Pub_ and looked a lot less welcoming. The outside’s painted a mixture of red, blue, and yellow, with a intricate gold script adorning the main window. She stares hard at the building, and if she’s being honest with herself she’d have to admit that it does kind of look a bit like a ship.

As she walks up to the door she feels a chill run down her spine. Emma snorts at that, wondering if perhaps it’s Storybrooke itself that makes her think such ridiculous thoughts, like there’s some sort of spell over the whole town that forces all the occupants to lose their damn minds.

The door opens with a creak and the ringing of a little bell, which Emma nearly laughs at, feeling like she’s just entered an antique shop rather than a fucking _bar_.

The inside of _The Jolly Roger_ is just as beautiful as the outside. All dark wood and royal reds. The dimmed lights give the space a cozy feeling, and the fireplace on the back wall makes it feel warm and inviting, but not suffocating or stifling. It’s like a bar straight out of a fairytale, maybe Goldilocks— _just right._

_Jesus, Emma, get a grip_. She hasn’t made a fairytale reference in probably a decade, yet two weeks back in Storybrooke and she’s firing them off by the dozens.

Looking for any sign of human existence, Emma scans the space finding nothing.

“Hello?” she calls out, but no reply comes her way.

Confused and feeling the first twinges of annoyance Emma reaches for her phone with the intention of checking her messages with Mr. Landlord to make sure she’d gotten the date and time correct. Before she can even unlock the screen the sound of heavy footsteps on wood interrupt her.

“Sorry about that lass, been downstairs doing inventory for the past hour and didn’t hear you come in,” a thick, accented voice comes from behind her.

Emma can’t breathe. She can’t think. She’s rooted to the ground. her hand clutches her phone so hard she thinks she might shatter it along with herself.

“Lass?”

That voice. God, that voice. That’s the same voice that’s haunted her dreams, and fuck who’s she kidding, the same voice that’s haunted her _every waking moment_ for the past ten years.

“Are you okay, love?” He’s closer now, and her back is still turned to him.  He doesn’t know, God he doesn’t know. If she were stronger she’d walk out the door and never look back but she’s not, and his hastily used “love” makes her so, so much weaker. So she turns, slowly, dreading the moment, before she faces the man she swore she’d never face again.

Her eyes meet his. Emma witnesses the very moment he recognizes her, his mouth falls open and his eyes widen.

Oh God, his eyes, those startlingly blue eyes. She’s never forgotten them. Even the slow pass of time on her memory has done little to dull the vibrancy of those eyes.

“Emma?” he whispers quietly. So quietly she barely hears it. but she’s so attuned to him, so focused on everything he’s doing, like her mind and body remembers how it used to be, remembers how _they_ used to be,  that there’s no way she could miss it. There’s no way she could miss the breathlessness of his voice, the way it trembles slightly. Who knew so much emotion could be packed into two syllables.

His hand that isn’t currently holding a bundle of bar rags has shifted forward a bit, as if to reach for her, but it’s clenched into a fist and nothing has ever hurt more, she thinks.

“Hi, Killian.”

 


	2. But oh how things have changed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First bit of background to Emma and Killian's past! Also I'll try to update sometime next week, but I do promise this fic will not be abandoned! I have it all planned out and once I'm done with my finals I should be able to write more frequently! :) Thanks for reading!  
> Also thanks to the_lady_of_misthaven for all her beta'ing help!
> 
> Also chapter titles from now on will be lyrics from the song: "Neighbor Song" by Aunt Martha. Give it a listen, it's wonderful!! It's also the song that helped inspire this fic!

_ The first day is always the worst. Emma knows this to be true; it’s the only fact she’s certain of every time she moves to a new foster home, every time she starts at a new school. _

_ The first day is always the worst, but at least she actually knows someone this time around. David walks with her to school, he even walks with her to her first class, before asking her if she wants to meet for lunch, and if so to meet him in front of the auditorium. Emma is beyond grateful, still that doesn’t mean that she isn’t dreading her first class, and all the one’s after that. _

_ Her first class of the day ends up being biology. The moment she walks through the door to the classroom she feels off balance, like the floor has suddenly shifted and she’s teetering on the edge. Everyone around her is talking and laughing so loud that Emma can barely hear herself think. _

_ Some heads turn her way when she walks in, so she quickly looks at the ground rather than the other faces and makes her way to an empty table in the back of the classroom. There’s a chair settled next to hers that’s empty and she prays for it to remain that way. _

_ Unfortunately prayers don’t seem to work this time around because not a few minutes later she hears the familiar screech of a chair being pulled against linoleum and she feels, actually feels, the heat coming off the body next to her. _

_ Emma’s staring at the faded black table top, not bothering to introduce herself to her new desk mate, slightly annoyed that he or she chose to sit next to her when there are plenty of open seats elsewhere. Yet, even with her obvious sigh of annoyance and her determined avoidance of her neighbor, she’s still shit out of luck because suddenly a hand is thrust into her line of sight. _

_ “Hello lass, name’s Killian.” An accented voice comes. It’s distinctly British and lilted in a way that makes the words sound like music _

_ Fan-fucking-tastic. _

_ Opting to just continue staring at the tabletop, Emma ignores the hand. She hopes that’ll be enough to make Mr. Sexy Accent leave her be, because that tactic had worked before with a whole slew of weirdos. Unfortunately for some reason it doesn’t work now.  _

_ “Is it your first day too?” He asks, seemingly unperturbed by her silence. “Must admit it’s my first time at an American school. But you Yanks seem alright.” _

_ He shifts a bit closer when she still doesn’t answer and Emma’s starting to get increasingly annoyed. If he keeps bugging her she’ll have no other option but to punch him in the face. Seeing that it’s her first day, punching someone might not be the best way to start the year. She can’t get expelled just yet, so she tucks the idea of punching him away for later. _

_ Before he can say another word, before Emma can properly shut him up, the teacher walks in and the noise in the classroom falls to a quiet hush. _

_ Almost immediately the sound of a pencil tapping against the edge of the desk distracts her from hearing a word that the teacher says. She’s about to say something when the tapping mercifully stops as her neighbor starts to write something down. _

_ Emma sighs and begins to open her notebook with every intention to take notes when a folded piece of paper enters her line of vision. _

_ It’s a note. From him. _

_ What are they ten? _

_ She’s not going to read it, she’s really not. She even pushes the note back at him a few times, trying to relay the message that she is not even remotely interested in what he has to say. However, he’s not to be deterred, as he continues to push it back towards her. Emma finally reaches for the paper, mostly just to stop the ridiculous game, and if she’s being honest with herself, partly out of her own curiosity. Hastily she unfolds the note under the table so she doesn’t get caught. _

 

**_You know most people would take your silence as off-putting, but I love a challenge._ **

 

_ The words are elegant, looping, perfect cursive. The sight of his unflawed penmanship makes her blood boil, because it takes a lot longer than a few seconds for her to write that well, and he seems to do it effortlessly. _

_ Emma doesn’t write back. Just folds the paper again and slides it back over to him, eyes focused on the blackboard, not even bothering to look at him. _

_ Class continues without another peep or note slide from British desk-mate. Hoping he’s given up, makes Emma both happy and a tiny bit upset. Shrugging her shoulders, she tries not to care. Everyone gives up on her eventually, why should British desk-mate be any different? _

_ The bell rings to dismiss class.  Lingering a bit because she’s hoping her new neighbor will sneak out before her so she doesn’t have to deal with him, Emma starts to pack up her things. When she looks up to check if he’s still there, she silently curses her bad luck. _

_ He stands right behind his chair, hands on the straps of his book bag. The first thing she notices are his eyes. They’re stunningly blue. Or maybe it’s just the effect of the equally blue henley that he’s wearing? Trying to distract herself from looking into them for much longer, her gaze wanders around his form. She spots a mess of ink black hair that somehow looks good sticking up in all directions. He’s good-looking, very good-looking. Even a pair of plain old jeans and a dirty set of converse can’t take it away from him and for some reason it makes her angry.  _

_ I mean how is that fair? Emma thinks as she roughly picks up her book bag and slings a strap over her shoulder. _

_ “Can I help you?” Not meeting his eyes, she shifts on her feet, in a need to get out of the classroom as soon as she can. _

_ His eyes light up and Emma’s stomach twists at the sight. _

_ “Ah! She speaks!” He exclaims, his smile wide as he nearly bounces up and down. _

_ Emma holds back a laugh. He looks absolutely ridiculous, his smile glaringly bright and his excitement almost palpable. It’s kind of adorable how giddy he gets simply from her passive-aggressive question. _

_ “Name’s Killian, but I already told you that, didn’t I, Swan?” _

_ “What—how?” Emma stammers out, confused by his knowledge of her last name. _

__ _ He must have realized his slip, because his cheeks turn red and he scratches behind his ear, his head angled down. _

_ “I—ah—saw your name on your notebook when you flipped it open. Afraid I didn’t catch your first name though.” _

__ _ Emma’s a little pissed that he invaded her privacy like that, her mouth set in a thin line and her arms crossed defensively against her chest.  Heading for the door, she begins to walk past him. _

__ _ “Afraid you’re not going to catch it then.” Emma throws over her shoulder. _

_ Not bothering to look at him again, she walks out the door. She hears no footsteps behind her. Letting out a sigh of relief when he doesn’t follow, Emma hikes her book bag up higher on her shoulder and heads to her next class, hoping desperately that she won’t see Killian Jones for the rest of her day. _

* * *

 

Sitting at the bar with her head angled down, away from him, Emma stares at her own hands.

Killian’s standing behind the bar putting beers away into the coolers. He keeps trying to talk to her, to have a conversation with her like they’re friends, like all they’ve ever been is just friends.

Emma remains silent, hell, she hasn’t even really _looked_ at him, too afraid of what she’ll see. That he’ll look perfect, handsome as ever, but most importantly that he’ll look strong, unblemished by the past ten years. She can’t face that right now. Can’t face the idea that he’s fine, where she’s not. That he’s _whole_ , while she’s broken.

“Emma?” he says for the second time in the past hour. She glances up, finding that he’s moved in front of her, the task of restocking the coolers finished.

Her gaze meets his and it feels so damn surreal that she almost can’t breathe.

He’s here. Killian Jones, _her_ Killian Jones, (woah, Emma, calm down. He’s not yours, not anymore.) He’s here, in front of her and it’s not a dream, and more surprisingly it’s not a nightmare.

“Jones.”

All desperate hope to add an air of nonchalance to her voice fades when she hears herself speak. Definitely _nowhere near_ nonchalance.

He smiles then, a wicked thing, with his eyes lighting up and his teeth flashing. She catches herself before she can smile back. She’s gotten so good at holding back her true feelings that it’s just natural now. She snorts. She had _years to practice it._

He pulls her from her thoughts when he speaks: “Gods, I mean—bloody hell it’s good to see you again, Emma.”

She doesn’t respond, just nods. Pushing back her cuticles and trying to formulate an escape plan that doesn’t make her look like a total bitch.

He doesn’t say anything else and before Emma can stop herself she blurts out the one question she’s been wondering since she heard his voice.

“Why are you here?”

Beautiful display of tact, Emma.

“I mean—why are you back in Storybrooke?” she amends quietly.

If Killian is taken aback by her question he doesn’t show it. A sigh escapes his lips, as he looks down at the bar.

“Ah, yes, well, that’s not a happy tale, I’m afraid.” he smiles, but it’s not genuine. It’s tight-lipped and barely there. It’s a smile she’s only seen once or twice, and it’s not one she particularly likes. He lifts his gaze to hers again. “Honorable discharge.” is all he offers as explanation before he walks away to the other end of the bar to vigorously wipe it down.

“Honorable discharge?” she parrots. “From the Navy?”

“Aye.”

“What—” she begins but stops when she notices his left hand. Or rather the lack of it.

How did she miss that? His left hand is artificial, the bright sheen of plastic and it’s rigidity is hard to miss now that she actually takes time to look at him.

He must have noticed her gaze because the prosthetic disappears under the bar, away from her view.

“Aye, bit of a monstrosity, that.” his voice is rough, dark. It’s a tad deeper than before and she doesn’t have to see his face to imagine how hard his jaw is clenched. She’s seen it before.

“Killian, I—”

“Don’t need the pity, thank you very much, Swan.” he spits out, cutting her off. He’s angry, maybe not with her, but angry just the same, and she’s never seen him like this. He used to be so happy, so light-hearted. That Killian seems to be long gone.

Just like the Emma he once knew is gone.

“So you’re looking for a place? Finally came back to Storybrooke, did you?”

Emma nods, thankful for the turn in conversation.

“I’m living with David and Mary Margaret right now,” she shrugs, “it’s only been a week, but honestly I think their sickeningly sweet displays of affection have only increased since high school.”

Killian laughs at that, a genuine laugh, and she finds herself smiling, if only just a little.

“Well Swan, I know you probably weren’t expecting such a dashingly handsome man to be your landlord, but if you’d like to see the place I’d be delighted to show it to you.” He’s got a teasing grin on his face, and even though Emma knows she’s probably making a mistake, she finds herself softening to him just a little bit.

“Sure, why not?” she replies.

“That’s the spirit, love!”

Her face immediately drops at the endearment, but he doesn’t see it, because he’s already headed to the door that sits to the left of the bar. Emma rises from her seat and follows him.

The door leads to a narrow set of stairs that Killian is already halfway up when Emma catches up to him. Walking gingerly on the wood, she curses under her breath because it hadn’t occurred to her that the idea to wear her highest heels today wouldn't be a good one.

At the top of the stairs the landing morphs into a small hallway with two black, wooden doors. Numbers 1 and 2 plated in gold and nestled into the middle of the wood.

Killian walks toward the number two door and digs out a key from his pocket. Turning it in the knob he glances back at her.

“It sticks a bit.”

She nods as he pushes against the door, jiggling the handle and putting his shoulder into it. After a moment where the door does, indeed, stick a bit, it swings open to reveal the apartment.

It’s a beautiful space, really. Small, but beautiful all the same.

The walls are old brick, and the floor looks to be the original wood. The whole room rests at an odd angle, almost triangle shaped. To her right is a small, modern kitchen. with white cabinets, black countertops and new appliances. Hell, there’s even an island. The rest of the room has enough space for a double bed, a sofa, maybe a coffee table or a bookcase even. She loves it immediately, the character of the place. The way the sun bathes the entire apartment and the homey feel that it gives off.

When Killian steps into the space, Emma notices he holds his prosthetic firmly behind his back while gesturing with his good hand.

It sends a twinge of guilt and sadness through her body. Knowing that he feels so ashamed of it that he feels like he needs to hide it from her, but she pushes the thoughts away before she steps into the apartment.

“Take a look around if you like, I’ll be in the hallway if you have any questions.” The door shuts behind him and Emma is left with sweet, blissful silence.

She looks around, taking in the tall, wide windows that cover the back two walls, five in all. White, gossamer-like curtains hang in front of them. Emma has to move one aside to assess the view from the apartment.

It’s breathtaking, to say the least. She’s got a clear view of the ocean. That fact alone sends a thrill of excitement through her. She could watch the storms dance over the sea, if she wanted to, feel the breeze on her face.

Emma catches herself and her thoughts, realizing she’s heading down a dangerous path. She acts like she’ll actually consider living here, and she can’t do that, can she?

Walking through the rest of the apartment, she finds a small bathroom with a claw foot tub and checkered black and white tiles. There’s also rather large closet, considering the size of the apartment, nestled into the wall beside the kitchen.

She hears a knock on the front door, before it opens to reveal Killian’s head poking in, his dark hair falling over his eyes. When he walks in, Emma lets herself get a proper look at him. He’s wearing a white tee-shirt under a dark blue button up that is _nowhere near_ _buttoned up_ , and a pair of dark-wash jeans that fit him perfectly. She can see a peek of chest hair escaping the slight V-neck of his shirt and she finds herself swallowing hard. His dark hair is disheveled and longer than she remembers as it rests on his forehead. He’s got a generous dusting of hair on his face, far from his clean-shaven look that he sported in high school.

Emma realizes that she’s been staring for quite awhile when she hears Killian chuckle.

“Like what you see, love?”

She opens her mouth to tell him off when he interrupts her.

“I mean the apartment, of course.”

 _Of course, my ass._ Emma thinks.

“It’s beautiful, Killian.” she says instead.

He hums thoughtfully, “Do I have myself a new tenant then?”

He has a grin on his face and she would have thought it a joke, or at least an attempt at nonchalance but she knows Killian. Or at least she _knew_ Killian, and she hears the slight tremor in his voice, the _hope_ that underlies the seemingly innocent question. That realization alone scares her.

“Uh, can I have some time to think about it? Maybe talk to David and Mary Margaret first?”

He nods, but she sees the slight note of disappointment in his eyes. “Of course, lass. Take all the time you need.”

Before turning and walking out the door, Emma takes one last look at the apartment. Waiting while Killian locks it, she catches a glimpse of door number one again. She can’t help from speaking up, as her curiosity gets the better of her.

“So if I did decide to move in, who would my lucky neighbor be?” she means it as a joke, really but Killian’s nervous laugh and the way he scratches behind his ear gives her an uneasy feeling.

“Ah, well, I hope this won’t be a deal breaker, but you know, it’s far easier to run a bar and be a landlord if you can do all those things within the same building.”

It takes her a minute before she realizes what he’s saying. Her mouth drops open and her eyes widen, and she’s sure her face must look absolutely hilarious.

“You’re the neighbor?!” she practically shouts. Killian flinches just a bit at the high pitch of her tone.

“Aye,” he responds. “Though I’m not there most the time. I usually just use it to sleep. I spend a lot of my time in my office in the basement, so I promise I won’t be much of a bother.”

Not knowing what to say, Emma just nods numbly. She’s still shocked as she heads back down the stairs that lead to the bar.

Once they’ve both reached the main floor again, Emma’s the one who finally breaks the silence. “So, I’ll let you know what I decide by the end of the week.”

Killian nods, “Sounds good, Swan. I eagerly await your call—or text.” He quickly amends when he sees the look she gets at the mention of calling him.

“Okay.” she says while taking a few steps back in the direction of the door. She needs to be outside as fast as possible. Needs to be back in her car, heading toward the safety of David and Mary Margaret’s home.

Backing up until she reaches the door, Emma opens it with a wary glance thrown over her shoulder at him.

“Bye, Killian.”

“Bye, Emma.”

Leaving him rooted in his spot, she heads out into the early October air, convinced that the shudder that runs through her is a result of chill in the wind, and not the way Killian Jones says her name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Review please? :)


	3. Now I act my age

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a hard chapter to write, but it's really that chapter that gets everything going, so I hope you enjoy!! :)

Emma waits the full week to tell Mary Margaret and David about Killian and the apartment situation, but when she finally works up the courage to tell them she’s more than a little surprised by their response.

“Killian?!” Mary Margaret practically shouts.

Startled by the small woman’s reaction, Emma spills some of her coffee on her lap, staining the hem of her white sweater.

Emma glares at Mary Margaret as she grabs a napkin from the middle of the table and dabs at the splotch.

“Yes, Killian.”

“ _The_ Killian? Like Killian Jones, Killian? As in your high school sweetheart and broody ex-navy turned bartender, Killian? That Killian Jones is the landlord of the apartment you went to see last week?” Her voice is high-pitched and a bit squeaky, the words coming out so fast they’re blurring together.

“Honestly, Mary Margaret, do you know anyone else with a name like Killian? Of course it’s _that_ Killian.” A hint of annoyance creeps into Emma’s voice, because frankly she didn’t expect this conversation to already be so excruciating.

“I know, I know,” Mary Margaret says, placing her hand on top of Emma’s attempting to placate her. “I mean but geez, that’s a crazy turn of events.”

“Is it though?” Emma counters, tugging her hand out from under Mary Margaret’s. She’s angry, and her flailing arms and wild speech show it quite well. “Why didn’t you or David tell me that he ever came back to Storybrooke, or that he was honorably discharged from the Navy, or that he lost his fucking hand?! Wouldn’t these things come up on occasion? Didn’t you think I’d want to know that?”

Mary Margaret looks equal parts surprised and guilty, her eyes widening before she lowers her head, but before she can respond her prince charming comes to the rescue.

“Really, Emma?” He says by way of greeting. He saunters into the room and crosses his arms over his chest, staring Emma down until she responds.

“What do you mean ‘Really, Emma’? Did you think I wouldn’t want to know any of that?”

“Emma are you misremembering the past ten years, or are you just so flustered by seeing Killian again that you’re taking it out on us?” David responds, just as annoyed as she is, his voice raising just a bit.

“Oh get to the point David, what are you trying to say?” She spits out.

“Emma we’ve both tried to bring up Killian multiple times in the past ten years, but you always shut us down before we could get a decent string of words in.” David says, and Emma’s mouth must drop open because he chuckles then. “So you really were just misremembering.”

Emma doesn’t speak, doesn’t say anything, because she honestly doesn’t know what to say. She can’t, for the life of her, recall a moment where they mentioned Killian once, where they tried to bring him up, and she’s wondering if she just blocked those memories out, or if they’re lying to her. She knows they’re not; because she’s really good at knowing when people are lying to her, and David and Mary Margaret, well they’re not.

Taking Emma’s silence as an invitation, Mary Margaret chimes in, “Emma, dear, you really don’t remember any of it? When one of us would call you and say something along the lines of ‘So Killian,’ and you’d just cut us off? Start talking about your new target, or how your creepy neighbor refuses to take his garbage out of the hallway?”

“I mean, vaguely.” Emma feels like her brain is mush, because she’s struggling to find words, fuck she’s struggling to find _thoughts_ right now. She’s just so damn confused. The memories start to come back, but it was almost a decade ago, and everything seems fuzzy when she thinks about Post-Senior-Year-Killian.

David finally takes a seat next to Emma and puts his arm around her, like a good brother would do, and David’s a _good_ brother, even if he’s not technically _her_ brother. “Eventually we just gave up on trying to keep you updated on the youngest brother Jones.”

Mary Margaret shoots David a look and Emma catches it immediately.

“What?” She looks back and forth between the two of them.

“Nothing,” David says, his head down like a scolded puppy. “So are you going to do it?”

“Do what?” Emma picks her now cold coffee up and takes a tentative sip before grimacing and heading toward the sink with the sole purpose of pouring the ruined drink down the drain.

“Rent the apartment?!” Mary Margaret squeals. Excitement laced through every syllable.

Emma gapes at both of them. Catching the smiles on their faces, she wonders if the oranges next to her would break a nose if she threw it hard enough. “Are you serious right now?”

“Of course we’re serious, Emma. It’s not like we’re saying you should move in with him, but Killian—well, he’s had a few rough years and I think you could help bring some light back into his life, be a friend to him.”

“Aren’t you his friends?” Emma mumbles through a mouthful of nutri-grain bar.

The duo sneaks another glance at each other and Emma just about loses it.

“Oh for fucks sake will you just say what you’re going to say instead of sending all these cryptic glances at each other? You’re not as subtle as you think.” The outburst sends a spray of half-chewed strawberry cereal bar across the kitchen, and Emma’s cheeks blush red as she turns around to grab the orange juice from the fridge.

David sighs, “Killian hasn’t talked to us since he’s been here.”

“What do you mean ‘hasn’t talked to you.’” Emma asks, pouring herself a glass of the orange drink, “You mean he hasn’t said a word to either of you since he came back? Not a one?”

“Well of course he’s said a few things, but he hasn’t _talked_ to us. You know what I mean?” David sighs and rests his arms on the counter, leaning forward slightly. He looks hurt, clearly taking the whole Killian situation personally. “We haven’t had a real conversation with Killian since he left after senior year.”

Emma’s throat suddenly feels much tighter at the mention of senior year. She swallows her mouthful of food and drinks with some effort.

“We went to his bar a couple of times, and he’d say hello, ask how we were, the usual, perfunctory conversations, but before we could get to anything more serious he’d suddenly have something urgent to attend to downstairs. Or he’d need to restock, or he’d get a headache, you know just stupid little excuses that were clearly meant to get him out of talking to us.” David says with a shrug of his shoulders.

“What an ass.” Emma mutters under her breath.

“Go easy on him, Emma. He’s had a—a really rough time since you both left.” Mary Margaret says, a motherly tone in her voice, a sadness present in her eyes.

“What happened to him?” Emma nearly whispers, so afraid of what they’ll say, but she doesn’t have to worry, because they both shake their heads, almost in sync.

“Not our story to tell, Emma. You’ll have to ask him yourself.” David rises from the chair and puts his coat on. “Besides, we don’t know the whole tale anyway. Wouldn’t want to do it any injustice.”

Emma barely manages not to slam her glass down on the counter, “Are you serious right now? Come on guys, just tell me _something_!”

They both just ignore her. Mary Margaret rinses out her mug and David grabs her jacket off the coat rack next to the door.

“Guys?”

Mary Margaret is looking at Emma with a soft smile, “We’re going to go down to Portland to get a few things. Maybe you should call Killian.”

The two of them are out the door and Emma is left alone in the loft with nothing but a half-empty stomach and her own helpless thoughts: a dangerous combination if there ever was one.

Before heading upstairs to change into a pair of skinny jeans and a blush pink sweater, she finishes off the orange juice.

She ambles around the apartment until the boredom gets to such a point that she starts cleaning, she actually starts _cleaning._ Unfortunately Mary Margaret must either be Snow White, or have an infantry of woodland creatures coming in to clean the apartment everyday because there is literally nothing more that Emma can do to help along the spick-and-span trail.

Boredom isn’t a good thing for Emma Swan. Boredom makes her reckless, and that’s why, forty minutes after Mary Margaret and David leave, Emma finds herself texting Killian Jones.

 **ES:** _Hey. Sorry to bother you, I was just wondering if you wanted to get Granny’s? Figure we have some things to talk about._

His response is almost instantaneous and it makes Emma smile before she can catch herself.

**KJ: _Hello, love. I’d love to meet up. 11:00 sound good to you?_**

**ES:** _See you then, Jones._

**KJ: _Aye, see you then, Swan._**

* * *

 

Emma’s got a booth at Granny’s by 10:48 and she’s so damn proud of herself for not being late, and actually beating Killian Jones to something. It used to be the other way around. She was always late and he was always early and he would tease her relentlessly for it. She smiles fondly at the memory.

And with those thoughts she now wishes maybe she hadn’t shown up at all, because the happy memories bring on the unhappy ones and she’s pushed those down for so long that the pain of them is so intense it burns. Makes her feel like she’s on fire, like if she looked down she’d see herself melting all over Granny’s floor while the old woman scolds her for making such a mess of her diner.

Before she can run like she always has and probably always will, she hears the chime of the door opening and looks up to see Killian.

Killian-sexy-as-fuck-Jones, because dear lord that man could not be more blow-my-mind, hot-as-hell handsome if he tried.

He’s wearing dark jeans and combat boots with a button down shirt and a leather vest, the whole look completed with a black leather jacket and Emma thinks that if she could choose one word to describe how he looks this moment it would be simple: _sin_. The man looks like pure, unadulterated sin.

A pair of black sunglasses prevent her from meeting his eyes but she knows exactly when he spots her because he pulls them off suddenly, an ear-splitting smiles taking over his features. He looks like a kid on Christmas and all she can think is that he looks like that because of _her._

Killian walks to her table with purposeful strides before reaching the booth and easing down across from her in one fluid motion.

“Swan,” he says a little breathlessly.

“Hi Jones,” she offers back, noticing that his brilliant blue eyes are rimmed in what looks to be black eyeliner. She never thought she would be a fan of eyeliner on men, but God is she a fan of eyeliner on Killian Jones.

_Okay, get a grip Emma, geez._

Before they can get anymore riveting conversation in, the waitress, Ruby, glides up to the table.

“What can I get you two to eat—EMMA!” Ruby practically screams her name and startles some older man so badly that he spills his coffee all over the table.

Emma winces at the sight and stares back at Ruby with wide eyes, and a quick glance at Killian tells her that he shares a similar look.

“Emma you’re back! Why didn’t anyone tell me?!”

“Uh,” Emma begins, unsure of what to say, but Granny yelling at Ruby to clean up the mess she helped cause saves Emma from trying to formulate a proper response.

“Shit,” Ruby says under her breath, “Okay, let me grab your orders real quick then I have to get back to work, but Emma, we need to catch up soon! You, me, Mary Margaret, and Elsa have to have a girl’s night for sure! Rabbit Hole?”

Emma nods at the mention of one of the local bars in town. She’s not sure if she really wants to go, thinking that it’s going to be hard to ease back into a comfortable friendship with all the women she hasn’t seen for the past ten years.

Ruby seems excited by Emma’s lackluster response, though, and takes Emma’s order of grilled cheese and onion rings, before turning to Killian, at which point her entire demeanor changes.

The smile falls off her face and her eyes narrow a bit. Emma glances at Killian and sees that he’s got a shy smile on his face, and his ears are bright red, all the bravado that he had when he walked in gone from his face.

“Jones.” Ruby says, contempt laced through her voice.

“Uh, I’ll take the same as Swan, then.” he says, his voice smaller than she’s ever heard.

Ruby nods and walks away, but not before throwing a smile Emma’s way, one that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“What was that about?” Emma asks Killian, who’s refusing to meet her eyes at the moment.

He sighs, “Well, let’s just say much has changed between Red and I since you’ve been gone.” It takes Emma a few seconds to remember Killian’s nickname for Ruby, but before she can respond he goes on. “Much has changed between the whole town and I, really. Not the most popular bloke at the moment.” he says with a self-deprecating laugh.

“Why not? You were always the charmer.” A slight grin graces her lips as she desperately tries to bring back the suave, cocky, fun-loving Killian Jones that she remembers. She’s not even sure why she wants him back; she only knows that she hates seeing him like this. This self-deprecating, quiet, withdrawn version of Killian Jones.

He chuckles dryly, “Much has changed, Swan.” Suddenly it becomes very apparent to Emma that this is not the moment where she finds out what has happened to the Killian Jones she once knew, the Killian Jones she once thought she loved.

“So what are you, the town pariah now?” Emma asks, her voice having a joking quality to it.

“You could say that.” is his response, as he picks up the saltshaker and turns it in his hand, examining it like it’s a precious stone or a rare artifact.

“That can’t be good for business.”

“Aye, well, you’d be right about that. I have a flow of regulars that tide me over during the slower months, but tourism season is where I can actually make a decent profit.” He sets the saltshaker down and meets her eyes, his tone hard and unforgiving as he continues. “Hard to hate a man, or boycott his place of business, if you know nothing of him.”

“Jesus. That’s fucked up.” Emma breathes, more to herself than him.

Killian laughs at that. He actually laughs; a real, old-Killian laugh and she can’t help the grin that splits her face.

“Aye, Swan. It’s quite fucked up indeed.”

He’s smiling at her and his eyes are bright, light crinkles grace the sides of the blue orbs, and Emma feels her heart speed up, her chest tighten, the waves beat hard in her stomach.

With her cheeks blushing pink and her mind racing, she looks down at the table. She’s sensing that she’s wading into dangerous territory by spending any amount of time with Killian, but she’s finding it hard to convince herself to stay away from him.

Thankfully Ruby comes back with their food just then, setting their plates down and not looking at Killian, before heading towards another table.

They eat their lunch in relative silence, Emma groans out loud when she takes her first bite of Granny’s grilled cheese. She’s not sure what the woman does to these simple sandwiches but they’ve always been the best she’s ever tasted.

Killian looks up at her when she groans, a certain fire lighting behind the blue of his eyes, and Emma blushes furiously, looking down at her plate and mumbling something about the food being good. He just chuckles lightly before continuing his meal.

Killian finishes his meal before Emma, pushing the plate toward the edge of the table and crossing his arms across the now clear surface.

Emma glances down at his arms and sees that he’s not wearing his prosthetic, but he has his left sleeve covering the entirety of his arm, hiding the injury from her, and she suspects, the rest of Storybrooke.

He catches her glance and must have realized what he’s done. He’s about to bring his left arm down and no doubt hide it under the table when Emma does something neither of them were expecting: she grabs his bad arm, keeping it in place.

He looks up at her suddenly, his eyes wide with a mix of shock and horror, and she’d bet her life that her face mirrors his own.

“It’s okay.” She finally manages to whisper out, but he doesn’t look convinced, the same look of horror etched on his face, so she goes on. “I don’t mind.”

“Aye,” He says with a nod, before pulling his arm from her grasp and shielding it from her view anyway. “But I mind, Swan.”

It’s a bit awkward after that, and this time, Emma finishes her meal in _absolute_ silence, stacking her plate on top of Killian’s when she’s finished.

She looks over at him and he’s staring at her so hard she’s starting to get fidgety.

“You alright?” she asks him.

He tilts his head slightly, “Course, love, why?”

“If you look at me any harder, you’re gonna drill a hole in my head.” She says, meaning it to be a joke, but he looks ashamed afterwards, glancing down at the table and playing with one of the rings resting on his fingers.

“So does this impromptu lunch mean that I’ve found myself a new tenant?” He asks instead.

He’s still not looking at her, and Emma is a mess of warring emotions. She’s so confused by the town’s supposed hatred of this man, so confused by his new anger and new self-deprecation. She’s worried about her heart and how it would handle being so close to Killian Jones again, but she’s worried about him too. Worried that he’s alone, just as alone as she’s been since she left Storybrooke a decade ago. Maybe it’s the similarities between them. Maybe it’s the way she sees her own self-doubt and loner-status in the way he won’t meet her eyes and in the way he lashes out instead of confronting scary feelings. Maybe it’s just that he’s Killian, no matter how different now, and she’s _always_ had a soft spot for Killian, despite everything that’s happened between them. Somehow she’s not concerned right now about what it is that makes her say it, even though something does. Before she can stop herself, before she can convince herself it’s a bad idea, she hears the words come out, the words she never thought she’d say when she left his bar a week ago.

“Yeah. Yeah I’ll rent the apartment.” She doesn’t meet his eyes as she speaks the words, opting to look outside at the now steady rain that’s falling from the perpetually cloudy sky.

She looks back at him after a few seconds and his smile is so bright that she thinks maybe Storybrooke doesn’t need the sun, not when they’ve got what seems to be a very happy Killian Jones in it’s midst.


	4. Made your bed right next to me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the not updating last week! Things got a bit hectic with work and whatnot, but I'm hoping to continue my usual once a week updating. I'm starting an internship in a couple of weeks though, so it just depends how frequently I can write! 
> 
> Anyway this chapter is a bit shorter than the last two, but next chapter is much longer and has another flashback scene. I'll update next week, probably mid-week, Wednesday or Thursday.
> 
> Enjoy! And leave a review if you're up to it :)

David and Mary Margaret help Emma move in on Wednesday, just four days after she tells Killian she’ll rent the apartment, and she has had approximately sixteen panic attacks since that time.

Mary Margaret has coaxed her through her doubts, and despite David’s original encouragement of the move, Emma’s finds that he’s maybe not so keen on the idea of her living next door to Killian as he let on.

“You’re sure about this, Emma?” David asks for the hundredth time _that day,_ and all Emma can think is that no, she’s not sure about this, but she’s made her decision. It was a hard one and David isn’t making it any easier to come to terms with it.

“David, we’ve moved about ninety-percent of my stuff into this apartment, I’m fairly certain there’s no going back now.” She counters, trying to hide her annoyance at her brother’s apprehension to her new living quarters.

She knows that David’s just trying to protect her; he’s always tried to protect her. Ever since she moved to Storybrooke the summer before her junior year of high school, and he saw the bruises on her arms from her foster family. He was so angry that someone was hurting her that he told his mother about it that day. David had inherited his good heart from his mother, Ruth, a woman so sweet that the people in town swore she was some kind of saint. Once Ruth found out about Emma’s situation it was only a matter of minutes before she called the police in. Ruth officially adopted Emma six months later, and David became as true a brother to her as if they were blood.

“You can always back out of this Emma.” David responds, and Emma scoffs at that.

“Actually, no I can’t. I signed a lease, David. One year in this apartment, and I’m really not trying to have Killian bring me to court.”

David mumbles something under his breath, but goes back downstairs to grab the last few boxes.

Mary Margaret’s in the kitchen unloading glasses and bowls and plates, stacking everything according to size and color and fucking width, Emma’s sure.

“This really is a beautiful place, Emma.” Mary Margaret says, looking over her shoulder as Emma collapses on the mattress set in the corner of the room.

Emma hums noncommittally. Looking around the room, she feels a sense of ease fall over her. She thinks she might be able to call this place home, which is both an exciting thought and a scary one.

She hasn’t felt like she’s had a place of her own really ever in her life. She’s always shared, the latest being of course with Walsh, in their Boston apartment. That place made her feel more like a stranger or a guest than a homeowner. She supposes Walsh probably attributed to that, rather than just the sterile atmosphere that the high rise Boston apartment put off.

David eventually comes up the stairs, huffing and puffing about no one helping him with the rest of the boxes, to which Emma rolls her eyes.

“Where’s Killian, again?” he asks once he sets the boxes down near the door.

Emma sighs loudly, “I told you at least a dozen times, David, he’s down in Portland taste-testing new beers.”

David hums, like he doesn’t buy it, and for some reason it makes Emma angry.

“What, David, you don’t believe him?”

“I just think it’s a bit convenient that the one day Mary Margaret and I are here is the day he suddenly has to take a beer-tasting excursion down to Portland.”

“Oh come on, David, he told me to tell you both that he was sorry he wouldn’t be here. He seemed genuinely excited about the prospect of seeing you and Mary Margaret when I mentioned last Saturday that you guys would be helping me move in.”

David scoffs, but doesn’t say anything more, opting instead to move toward Mary Margaret and pretend to help her put away the cutlery.

“Killian isn’t avoiding you David!” Emma says, exasperated and annoyed by the whole situation. She doesn’t need this drama in her life.

“Aye, he’s not.” Comes a voice from the doorway and everybody’s head whips over at the sound.

Killian’s standing just outside the apartment, a six pack of beer clutched in his right hand and a pizza box balancing on his prosthetic.

The trio stare at him in awe, and an almost unbearable silence ensues for about thirty seconds before Mary Margaret finally recovers.

“Killian!” She says, practically running towards the man and throwing her arms around his middle.

Killian lets out a light “omph” followed by a small chuckle as he looks down at the smaller woman and tries to maintain a grip and a balance on the two items he’s currently carrying.

“Hello, milady.” He says with a bright smile on his face. “I brought sustenance and libations for the moving team.”

Emma rises from the bed and approaches the two, taking both the pizza box and the six pack from Killian’s hold and setting the items on the counter. He smiles at her in thanks and she feels her cheeks redden, a natural response to Killian Jones, she’s found.

“We’re so glad to see you, Killian.” Mary Margaret releases her hold on Killian and looks up at him with what Emma is sure is a very sincere smile.

“Aye. I’m glad to see the two of you as well.” A shy smile graces his face.

“Well we’ve been here. Could have seen us multiple times.” David says, his face cold and his arms crossed over his chest. Emma would roll her eyes at him and his intimidation tactics if she wasn’t so surprised by the clear anger that David seems to have toward the other man.

“Aye. I’m afraid I owe you both an apology.” Killian pauses, running his hands through his hair. “I’ve acted like a right git these past few years, and--bloody hell, I don’t know how to even _begin_ explaining it.”

The apartment has gone dead quiet. Emma’s just staring at Killian, waiting for him to go on, and she suspects that both David and Mary Margaret are doing the same.

“After I came back to Storybrooke, after--” Killian pauses again and his eyes darken just a hint, such a slight change that Emma’s sure neither Mary Margaret or David caught it, but she did. She catches the way his attitude has shifted, the way he looks down slightly, the subtle signs of someone who’s haunted. Emma knows all too well what it’s like to be haunted by a memory; hell she’s haunted by dozens, including his.

Killian swallows visibly, “After everything. I knew I didn’t quite belong back in Storybrooke, but then again I didn’t quite belong anywhere. I chose to come back here because this town held some of my best memories.” He looks up at all of them, smiling fondly. “But it also held some of my worst. And I’d returned a different person, a different man than I was when I first departed. I--”  he sighs. “I was embarrassed of who I’d become. I didn’t know how to face the both of you, and so I avoided you instead.”

Mary Margaret and David say nothing, just stare back at Killian. Emma’s so floored, so surprised by the honesty and the hurt in his voice that she’s not sure what to think of it all.

“I was a coward.” Killian continues after a beat. “And I’m forever apologetic of that.”

Silence follows the confession. Long, unnerving silence, and Emma hasn’t a clue what to do about it. Killian waltzed into the apartment and quite literally dropped a massive amount of raw emotion on all three of them, and it seems to have rendered them speechless.

After what seems like hours, but was most likely seconds, of painful silence David finally breaks the spell. He strides forward and pulls Killian into a hug, which Killian returns just as fervently, clapping the other man on the back.

They separate after some time and David smiles at the other man. “Welcome back, _mate_.” He mimics Killian’s accent poorly and Killian lets out a chuckle.

“It’s good to be back.”

Mary Margaret’s the next to hug Killian, her eyes gleaming a bit with tears.

“We missed you.” She says, playfully smacking him on the chest.

Emma’s glad that the tension has eased after the round of hug-giving, and Killian’s responding “Aye, I’ve missed you as well”, but the awkwardness quickly ramps up again when it would seem that it’s Emma’s turn to respond to Killian’s confession.

The thought of hugging him makes her want to run and hide, and she can’t, for the life of her, think of anything to say. She starts to get angry at how helpless she feels in the moment because should she even _have to_ respond? The apology was for Mary Margaret and David, not her, so logically she shouldn’t have to say anything. She shouldn’t have to feel weird for just standing there after such intense emotional displays of friendship and forgiveness occurred right before her eyes, and yet she does. Everyone is staring at her and everyone is silent and she just wishes she could disappear. Pack a bag and run away from this moment.

Thankfully, David comes to her rescue.

“Well I’m starving!” He booms, patting his stomach as if it would make a hollow sound, even though Emma knows he ate just a few hours ago. “Let’s eat before it gets cold.”

The next hour is filled with beer, pizza, and good conversation. Good conversation that doesn’t err on the side of awkward because thankfully Mary Margaret and David keep it neutral, talking about how they might start trying for a baby soon, or how they think they might make a weekend getaway down to Portland this coming spring.

Killian and Emma provide all the appropriate head nods and thoughtful hums, asking just the right questions and playing along perfectly. It isn’t until David brings up Emma’s new position as deputy that things start to take a quick turn south.

“You’re the new deputy?” Killian asks, the barest hint of shock etched on his face.

“Yep. Started last week.” Emma replies while snatching the last slice of pizza from the box, much to David’s dismay. “So stay out of trouble, Jones.” She jokingly points the piece of pizza at him menacingly, looking at him with as much faux intimidation as she can manage.

Killian laughs nervously, staring down at his feet and scratching behind his ear. He doesn’t respond otherwise, and Emma’s confused by the sudden change in his mood.

It seems that everyone else also catches onto the awkward moment, because David changes the subject yet again, offering to run the pizza box down to the recycling, while Mary Margaret finishes putting away the cutlery.

Emma’s still suspicious of Killian though, and his sudden---almost guilty, change in attitude. She pulls him aside while the other two guests are occupied.

“What’s up, Jones? Got a criminal record I don’t know about?” With that question, Emma realizes she should really stop trying to make jokes, because they never seem to be received as such.

Killian’s eyes darken and he looks angry, though Emma’s pretty sure he’s not angry at her, just angry in general, angry at the world.

“You needn’t worry about it, Swan. I can battle my demons on my own time.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s never heard Killian talk about demons, let alone him having any. It turns out it doesn’t matter that her response to his confession is silence, though, because he walks away from her suddenly, leaving her standing alone, drowning in confusion.

David comes back in then, and announces that it’s time for him and Mary Margaret to go. He thanks Killian for the food and beer, and tells Emma that he’ll see her tomorrow bright and early at the station.

Emma just nods numbly, thanking them for coming to help, and before she knows it she’s left alone with Killian, and a very, _very_ awkward silence.

“Listen, Emma,” Killian begins, before sighing and sitting down on the edge of her plush reading chair. “I’m sorry for all of that, just then, and I promise I’m not Jekyl and Hyde here, with my sudden anger then sudden apologetics, I’m just--I’m just not who I used to be and I don’t know how to--I don’t want to--God I just, I’m ashamed.”

“Ashamed?”

He nods. “Aye, love. I’m not who I used to be, I’m not the same man you once lo--knew.” He corrects himself before he can say the one word that would make her run further than she ever has before, further from him than she has ever been, and Emma’s grateful, even though she knows what he was going to say, and even though that knowledge makes her stomach twist.

“Half the time I don’t even feel human, I feel less than that. I feel horrible about myself and some of the things I’ve done, and I don’t know how to react. I’m truly sorry if the anger I harbor for myself gets misdirected at you, lass, I don’t want to hurt you.”

Emma swallows, her throat feeling tighter at the confession. He doesn’t want to hurt her? Well it’s too late for that, he hurt her way before this. Yet, something in his confession pulls at her. Maybe it’s the comment about feeling less than human, because God knows Emma has felt that way. Felt like she doesn’t deserve to even be here, like she shouldn’t bother other people with her existence.

Of course her less-than-human-feelings have to do with all those years in the foster homes, and all those years of people abandoning her. For some reason, Emma’s fairly sure that Killian’s feelings of inadequacy stem from whatever happened to him after senior year. Perhaps it all has to do with how he lost his hand.

Emma knows that talking about these feelings, about these experiences is supposed to help, and even though she’s never been one for talking about all that personal emotion shit, she figures she should give it a try with Killian.

“How’d you lose your hand, Killian?” She spits it out before she can even realize that maybe that wasn’t the best way to approach such a sensitive topic, but it’s out and all she can do is wait for his response.

He doesn’t disappoint. His response is almost instantaneous. His eyes widen and he even flinches back a bit, before looking down at his prosthetic. It takes him awhile to meet her gaze again, but when he does the look he gives her is the last thing she was expecting.

He’s got a smirk on his face, his eyebrows waggling as he speaks to her. “It matters not love, but I assure you, I’m not lacking because of it.” He winks at her when he’s done.

“You know what, I better get to bed. Thanks for stopping by, Killian.” She turns her back to him and goes about making her bed.

She knows that he’s still there, she hasn’t heard him move, but no less than thirty seconds later he’s up, shuffling towards the door.

Emma risks it and glances back at him, but he’s not staring at her, he’s just staring at his prosthetic again.

“Aye, good night, Swan.”

He opens the door and steps out, shutting it firmly behind him.

Emma stares at the vacant space that he had just occupied, feeling a bit empty and also a bit guilty. She knows his bravado is just a defense mechanism, just like her stand-offish nature is her’s, and she knows he’s hurting, but she can’t worry about his feelings anymore. She can only worry about herself, and her sympathizing for Killian Jones, well, that’s something to worry about.


	5. Was the same old song that you used to sing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really loved writing this chapter and I'm so excited to share it with you all! This is my favorite chapter so far and I can't wait for you to see a bit more of Emma and Killian's past, as well as how their relationship is evolving right now! Enjoy! And please leave a review if you're up to it! :)
> 
> As always a special thanks to the-lady-of-misthaven for all of her beta'ing help.

_ Emma was right when she thought her first day would be horrible. First she had biology with the most annoying, most infuriating, British desk-mate. Then she had pre-calculus with a crazy teacher who prefered to be called by his first name. He actually wrote “Mr. Jefferson” on the board, and Emma had just rolled her eyes. Then she had gym, and of course she hadn’t thought of bringing gym clothes so she had to run laps in her jeans and sweater. Homeroom was awful too, with a whole gang of jocks hopped up on redbull and testosterone, who just would not  _ shut up  _ about “next week’s big game”. _

_ By the time lunch rolls around, Emma is ready for a break, and thankfully a familiar face will be waiting for her, relief washing through her as she remembers that she’s meeting David for lunch. _

_ Emma makes her way to the auditorium, following the directions that David told her this morning. She’s prepared to breathe a sigh of relief when she sees him, but instead she finds herself at loss for air. _

_ He’s not alone. Standing next to him is a petite brunette with a  pixie cut, and Emma’s worst nightmare, most likely her soon-to-be mortal enemy: Killian Jones. _

_ She almost,  _ almost _ , turns around and pretends she didn’t see them, planning to tell David that she just couldn’t find the auditorium, despite his thorough instructions, but it’s too late for all of that, because before she can make a decision David calls out to her. _

_ “Emma!”  _

_ Fucking fuck. No she has to lookup. He is waving at her and she knows there’s no way out of it. Still trying to contemplate escape plans,she makes her way over to the trio. She keeps her head down, because she absolutely does not want to see the look on British desk-mate’s face.  _

_ When she finally finds herself standing in front of them she risks a quick glance up, and sure enough, the Jones kid is smirking. Fucking smirking. _

_ Emma has to resist every urge in her not to punch that stupid, infuriating smirk off of his pretty face. Thankfully, David interrupts. _

_ “Emma this is Mary Margaret, my girlfriend,” he begins. _

_ David had told her about having a girlfriend, but that she was gone all summer visiting her father and her stepmom in New York.  _

_ Emma nods and smiles at Mary Margaret as David continues with the introductions. _

_ “And this is Killian Jones, he’s new too! He’s in Mary Margaret’s English class and she invited him to have lunch with us.” David’s got such a huge grin on his face, mirroring Mary Margaret’s, and in this moment she really hates how truly kind David, and it would seem Mary Margaret, are. _

_ “Actually I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting  _ Emma.”  _ He says her name pointedly, and Emma curses David and God and fate for the circumstances that led Killian Jones to learning her name. Now she’s lost all the leverage that she had over him. _

_ “Oh really? That’s great!” Mary Margaret practically squeals. _

_ “How’d you meet already?” David asks, confusion laced through his words. _

_ “Swan and I have biology together first period. In fact we’re even desk mates.” He finishes off his explanation with a wink directed at her. _

_ Emma could throttle him, honest to God she thinks she might, but before she realizes what’s happening, the rest of the group starts walking toward the cafeteria. _

_ They remain somewhat silent on the way upstairs, with Mary Margaret and David recounting some story that happened last year at lunch where someone snorted chocolate milk out their nose, and Emma would think that maybe it was funny if she didn’t think that she might keel over with annoyance. _

_ Killian is walking right next to her the entire time, and she can feel his eyes flickering back to her every few seconds, but she’s not taking the bait, and her eyes remain firmly on the ground. _

_ When they finally reach the cafeteria the four of them sit down at a small round table. _

_ Emma, David, and Mary Margaret are just starting to pull their lunch out when someone approaches the table. Apparently both Mary Margaret and David knows them, because the fall into a conversation straight away. Emma can’t help but overhear a few things before deciding to tune the chatter out, most notably the name August, and something about a new motorcycle. _

_ Feeling awkward, Emma starts to unwrap her sandwich, ready to take a big bite when she notices that Killian is just staring at his hands, no food in sight. _

_ “What, you don’t eat?” Emma says before she can stop herself.  _

_ Killian’s head whips up at her question, eyes wide before they take on a nervous gleam. His cheeks turn red and he scratches behind his ear, just like he did earlier when he was embarrassed about his invading of Emma’s privacy in trying to find out her name. _

_ “Uh, no, I do, I just don’t eat  _ today _.” _

_ “You’re just not hungry on Mondays, or?” Emma asks, and she knows she’s being a bit rude, but she’s confused, it seems all his previous bravado has disappeared, and in it’s place has come a whole lot of insecurity. _

_ He scratches behind his ear once more, and he doesn’t look at her when he speaks, his voice subdued and quiet. “My brother Liam and I just moved here about a week ago, and alas, he’s not gotten paid just yet. We’re a bit low on lunch food at the moment.” _

_ Emma doesn’t ask for an elaboration. She doesn’t ask where his parents are, or why he moved. She doesn’t say a word, all she does is divide her lunch in half and push it over to him. She munches down on her half of the PB&J and doesn’t glance his way. _

_ “Swan, I--” _

_ “Just eat, Jones.”  _

_ And so he does. They sit in silence for the rest of the meal, even when Mary Margaret and David return their attention to the table, Killian and Emma just let them speak and nod along to the words they’re both not really hearing. _

_ Emma knows that her and Killian have reached an understanding, and he may not know that she’s just as much a lost girl as he is a lost boy, but she knows. She knows what it’s like to not have parents, and though he has a brother she knows that’s not the same thing as a mother or a father. She knows what it’s like to not have a lunch for school, and for the first time since they met, Emma Swan feels like she might have a connection to Killian Jones. They’re kindred spirits, alike in ways that no one else they’ve met can really understand.  _

_ She glances up at Killian just before lunch ends, and he smiles at her, genuine and thankful, and Emma does something she never thought she would do when it comes to her annoying, infuriating British desk-mate: she smiles back. _

* * *

 

Emma wakes with a headache and a precise understanding that things with Killian are  _ already _ majorly awkward.

Of-fucking-course they are.

She spends her morning maneuvering around unpacked boxes and stacks of clothes, picking out her deputy outfit for the day and heading out the door with a bottle of water and a banana in hand.

She doesn’t see Killian on her way out, though she knows he’s up. The lights in the bar are all on and she can smell coffee brewing somewhere. Figuring that the best course of action for the rest of the week is to just try her hardest to avoid him, she doesn’t try to find him. 

Emma makes it to the sheriff’s station by nine o’clock sharp, clocking in and maneuvering through the file boxes and general clutter until she reaches David’s desk. 

He’s staring intently at the computer, scrolling down occasionally, his eyes narrowed and his forehead creased. There’s two cups of to-go coffee sitting on the edge of his desk and Emma smiles at the thoughtful gesture, her big brother never failing to come through.

Emma picks up the cup and snaps her fingers in David’s direction.

“Earth to David.”

He looks up, his eyes wide and glassy from switching focus so suddenly, but he smiles at her anyway.

“Morning, baby sister. How was the first night in the new apartment?”

Emma leans back against another desk, facing David and taking a sip of her coffee before responding.

“Great, except for those few minutes after you and Mary Margaret left.”

David crosses his arms, his eyebrows raised. “What happened? Did he say something? Do you want me to talk to him?”

“What, David, no! Calm down.” Apparently the Killian and David’s friendship isn’t quite as mended as Emma thought. “I just asked him about his hand, and how he lost it, and he got all weird, pulling out his Mr. Bravado act on me, that’s all.” She shrugs. “Then when I got clearly upset at him he looked like a kicked puppy or something. Like it was my fault he was being an ass.” Emma feels her previous frustration seeping in. Why should she feel guilty? She was just trying to talk to him.

“How’d that topic come up?” David asks. Coming around to the front of the desk to face her, he leans back slightly, one arm crossed over his chest and the other holding his coffee.

“He said something to me about feeling inhuman, or like, not worthy of human interaction, something like that. Anyway, I figured it had to do with the loss of his hand so I just asked him how he lost it.” She’s trying to put off an air of nonchalance, but she knows David isn’t buying it. This isn’t a calm or easy topic, it’s a  _ hard _ one, and Emma’s never really been any good at hard conversations.

David raises his eyebrows at that. “You  _ just _ asked him?”

Emma shrugs, knowing where he’s going with this.

“That’s a pretty big thing to  _ just ask _ someone, Emma.”

She throws her hands in the air in exasperation. “I was just trying to get him to talk about it! Maybe if he talked to someone about what he went through then he wouldn’t feel so damn awful about himself!” 

Emma finds herself starting to get irritated, she’s not in the wrong here, is she? 

“Emma, you barely know the guy.”

“Barely know the guy?!” She sputters, “David I’ve known him for years, I dated him for nearly two! I know Killian!”

David sets his coffee down in order to cross his  _ other  _ arm across his chest.

_ Oh great, here we go _ . Emma thinks,  _ Big brother mode, activated. _

“Emma, that was ten years ago. You don’t know him, you know the memory of him.” Emma tries to interrupt but David’s having none of it, barreling on over her squeak of denial.“Listen, Emma, I get it. You think you can help him, but just think, for a second, what would your reaction be if he asked about your time after high school? About Walsh, or Graham, or even--”

“Don’t.” Emma says sharply.

David raises his hands up, “All I’m saying is that the subject of losing a  part of your limb is not one to be approached lightly. It’s not the type of story you tell after ten years of no contact with someone you used to lo--” 

Daring him to finish the word, Emma glares hard at David. For some reason it keeps coming back up, and Emma isn’t dealing with that. She doesn’t want to think about what she  _ thought  _ she felt for Killian, because it was all a lie in the end. You don’t do what he did to her if you felt so strongly about someone. You just don’t.

“I’m not trying to upset you, Emma...” David’s voice is soft. “ I’m just trying to help you see why maybe he reacted how he did. I don’t know how Killian lost his hand, but I’ve heard rumors, and none of them are very kind.”

Emma raises an eyebrow at that, “What do you mean?”

David sighs, picking up his coffee and taking a long drag before settling back down in his chair. “Let’s just say, it sounds like he’s lived a pretty painful decade, and I’d cut him a little slack. Just like you’d want him to cut you some slack if you were in his position.”

She nods numbly,  going around her desk to sit in her chair and start on getting a bit of paperwork done, though she’s barely paying it any real attention. David’s speech has subdued her a bit, but it’s also piqued her curiosity to no end. She knows Killian is different, but she just wants to know what happened to the Killian Jones she thought she knew. 

She wants to know what happened to him, but she knows it’s a two-way trade. If she gets him to tell her his secrets, she’ll have to tell him her’s. Emma’s not going to do that, she’s not, because she’s told Killian Jones some of her deepest darkest secrets, and it still didn’t stop him from leaving her.

She’s so wrapped up in her thoughts she gets almost no paperwork done by the time lunch rolls around. David’s up out of his seat exactly at noon, leaving for a lunch date with Mary Margaret. 

It’s a slow day in town, and therefore a slow day at the station. Keeping her cell and radio on, just in case, Emma decides to take her lunch break a bit earlier than usual.

She settles on takeout from Granny’s and heads out of the station. She opts to walk to Granny’s rather than drive, because it’s only a block or two and she wants to feel like she’s actually _ done something _ today. In the end it’s a good thing that she ended up walking, because once she steps foot in the diner she knows she has to order a large order of onion rings, the smell of the food too much for her feeble amount of self-control.

After paying, Emma leaves and is about to head back to the station when David’s words come back at her. Full force.

Maybe she should cut Killian just a bit of slack. She doesn’t know what happened to him. She doesn’t know what happened to Liam either. She knows Killian was extremely close to his older brother, but wherever Liam is, it’s not Storybrooke.

Not only does Killian look like he might be in bad shape emotionally, but he’s also her landlord now, and her neighbor (God, she’s still in shock over  _ that _ piece of information). She needs to mend things, because she can’t spend the next year tip-toeing around someone who lives literally ten feet from her own front door. 

In a split-second decision Emma heads back to  _ The Jolly Roger _ , preparing for the worst yet determined to make things right with Killian. He was her friend once, they can be civil with each other, can’t they?

The bar is quiet when she gets there. It’s only about 12:30, and the tavern doesn’t open for another three hours or so. The lights are dimmed, and the coffee smell has all but evaporated from the room. Now it just smells like oak and some rich spice. A comforting smell that warms Emma immediately, practically zapping the October chill out of her skin.

She can hear a bit of music playing from the back stairwell. It’s Debussy, and Emma can’t help the wide grin that breaks across her face.

Debussy. If she listens hard enough she can pinpoint the exact song, whether it’s one of his arabesques, or _ Rêverie _ , or Killian’s personal favorite,  _ Clair de Lune _ .

She remembers sitting on the piano bench in the high school’s music room, after school, while both of them were wasting time before going home, hoping to steal just a few more minutes together. Killian would play all the classical music he could remember. He could almost never play a whole song, forgetting notes and chords, but he played well, and with passion. Emma had never really liked classical music, but she’d come to love it simply because Killian loved it.

The one song he could play all the way through, perfectly, and with an almost effortless concentration, was  _ Clair de Lune _ . The first time he played it for her was late October of their junior year, when they were still just friends. It was the Friday before Halloween, and the school was practically empty, only a few teachers loitering around. It was a perfect moment, one Emma can still remember in exact detail.

Now whenever she hears that song she can’t help but think of Killian.

She hasn’t listened to it in years.

Suddenly the thought of approaching him right now seems impossible. Her body feels hot all over, and she’s thrumming with nervous energy, but she came here for a reason and she’s not backing out now.

As she approaches the stairs the music grows louder, and Emma breathes a sigh of relief because it’s  _ Rêverie,  _ and though he’d played it for her before (bits and pieces anyway) it was never associated with any  _ particularly _ painful memory, just the usual ones.

She walks down the stairs gently, not wanting to disturb him entirely if he’s busy.

When she reaches the bottom step she looks around at the space. It’s small, the walls and floors a dark gray stone. There’s a massive red rug that takes up most of the floor space. It sports an intricate design, with gold and silver fabric weaved throughout. There are bookcases lining the walls, and there’s not a free spot on one of them. In fact, Killian’s got books stacked on the floor, pointless things like random editions of the  _ Oxford Dictionary _ , and about a thousand different volumes of  _ Shakespeare’s Complete Works. _

A long oak desk rests along the wall across from the stairs, filled with more books, stacks of papers, an open macbook, and a multitude of  _ clutter. _  The mess confuses her, because Killian had always been so neat and organized, and this hodgepodge of items and clutter doesn’t match the Killian she used to know.

She spots the bluetooth speaker in the far corner of the desk which is still playing  _ Rêverie. _ A large, red, high-backed chair sits facing away from the desk, toward the stairs, and that’s when Emma notices Killian, who hasn’t quite noticed her yet.

He’s sitting in the chair, one leg crossed over the other, wearing a loose gray t-shirt and blue jeans. His feet are bare and his prosthetic is gone. No eyeliner frames his eyes and his hair falls messily in front of his very concentrated face. She notices right away that he’s drawing something--a pastime that it seems he never gave up, despite having lost his dominant hand. 

He looks so like the Killian that she used to know that it makes her heart ache. A vicious thing that seems like it might never end, and Emma feels like she could throw up if she really wanted to.

The song ends and another Debussy piece comes on, an vaguely familiar one to Emma, but she can’t pinpoint the title. 

Killian looks up when the song changes, glancing at the speaker with a small smile on his face, as if to thank the device for playing such an agreeable song. Emma would laugh at the thought if that wasn’t also the moment his eyes meet hers.

“Swan?” Is all he says. Apparently not shocked by her presence, but merely surprised, his eyebrows only  _ slightly _ raised.

She takes the final step down and faces him, before speaking: “Hi.” is all she says, suddenly nervous.

He smiles, bright and contagious, “Hi.” 

“Listen, I, thought, well--” Emma sighs, rubbing her hand down her arm to relax herself a bit. “I brought some lunch, and I thought that maybe you’d like to eat with me, because well--” Trying to find the right words is apparently not as easy as she thought it would be. “--because I’m sorry if I put you on the spot last night. I shouldn’t have asked that, and I feel awful, and--”

“Emma, Emma, It’s okay.” Killian says, sitting up in his chair and setting his sketchbook aside. “I was going to apologize to you later tonight. I shouldn’t have acted that way, it was bad form. Sometimes I let my anger out in unseemly ways, and I’m sorry that you got caught in the crossfire.”

Looking down to avoid meeting his eyes, Emma nods, After a few tense moments she looks up and he’s smiling at her nervously. 

“Now what was that you said about lunch, love?” He winks at her and Emma feels helpless, like she’s drowning. Maybe this was a bad idea, is all she can think because she can feel herself being pulled back into Killian, and she can’t let that happen, she can’t let her guard down again. She doesn’t have much of a choice in the moment though, so she pulls the bag of Granny’s food from behind her back, and Killian gestures for her to come forward.

There’s another chair in the corner with wheels, it’s like the desk chair she uses at the station. She rolls it over and faces Killian, bringing out the lunch, before splitting it evenly and giving half to Killian.

They eat in silence for a few minutes before Killian speaks up.

“This feels familiar, huh, Swan?”

Emma looks up from her half of the grilled cheese to find Killian chewing and looking at her sincerely, no trace of humor in his gaze.

“What does?” She asks, wondering if he means Debussy, or the closeness between them, maybe he’s hinting at something from long ago that she forgot about (a foolish thought, really, she’s forgotten almost nothing about him).

“Lunch.” Is all he says, before finishing off his half of the sandwich with a large bite. 

That’s when Emma remembers. The first day they met, the first lunch they shared, the first time she ever felt like there was something more to Killian Jones than meets the eye.

It’s a good memory, but a good memory equals a painful one when it comes to them, and she wishes he wouldn’t have brought it up. She wishes she wouldn’t have come here, because now she feels trapped in a situation that she didn’t want to create. She doesn’t want to talk about their past with him,  _ ever _ . That’s why it’s called the past, and all those memories should stay there, lodged in some far corner of her brain where she can keep all the pain padlocked away.

Instead of answering him, she just asks about his trip to Portland last night.

“It went quite swimmingly, actually.” He tells her. “I’ve found a new pilsner that I quite like, but I’m not sure if I want to get rid of my ever faithful Brooklyn just yet.” He goes on for a bit more, arguing about the difference in taste between the Brooklyn Pilsner it’s new, current contender.

Emma listens carefully, before letting her eyes roam a bit. That’s when she catches sight of a picture frame sitting on his desk.

It’s crowded behind a stack of manilla folders and an empty box of Earl Grey, but Emma can make out the shape of a woman.

She’s beautiful, as far as Emma can tell, long, black, curly hair and a kind smile, but she can’t catch any more details.

Killian hasn’t noticed her line of sight and he keeps going on about beers, no doubt trying to fill the awkwardness between them.

“Who’s that?” Emma blurts before Killian can move onto IPA’s or wheat ales.

Killian’s head swivels around almost comically at Emma’s question, as if she were referring to a stranger standing behind his chair, but he catches her line of sight quickly and his whole demeanor changes abruptly.

He clenches his jaw several times, and his eyes turn from blue to black. It’s like he’s morphed into a darker version of himself, an angrier, more cynical Killian Jones, one she hasn’t fully seen before. 

“Someone from long ago.” He mutters, his voice rough.

Emma’s always been told that her curiosity gets the better of her at times, and she figures that’s what prompts her to ask her next question, even though it’s abundantly clear that Killian would rather not continue along this line of conversation.

“What was her name?” 

“Milah.” He practically whispers it, and Emma has to strain to hear the name.

“Where is she?”

“She’s gone.” He says, standing abruptly and walking to the back corner of the room, looking at the bookshelf as if he’s suddenly found something particularly interesting.

Emma just stares at his back, ready to ask another question, to find out where exactly this woman, who clearly means quite a bit to Killian, has gone.

“Killian--” She starts, but he interrupts her quickly.

“I’m afraid I’m going to make poor company for the rest of the afternoon, Swan. It’s best if you go.”

Not bothering to pick up the remnants of their lunch, or put the chair back where it came from, Emma stands up and and practically runs towards the stairs. Getting out of that basement as fast as possible, is her only concern right now.

She feels sick. Her stomach twists as she climbs the wooden steps back up to the bar. She doesn’t know who Milah is or was, but she knows that this woman was important to Killian, and that thought makes the urge to run even stronger.

It seems Killian was right about having demons, that’s something that has become vividly apparent after this particular lunch session. 

She reaches the top of the stairs in record time, heading straight for the front door of the bar. She’s only been gone from the station for about a half hour, and her lunch isn’t technically over yet, but Emma is done with free time for the day. She needs to bury herself in work, because otherwise all she can do is think, and think, and think about every tiny bit of information that she’s learned today.

Emma opens the door to the bar, shutting it firmly behind her, but not before catching a few lilting notes of  _ Clair de Lune _ echoing from the basement.


	6. And I had you come for a midnight drink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter to date, so I hope you enjoy! Leave a review if you're up to it!
> 
> A heartfelt and enormous thank you to the-lady-of-misthaven for all her help with beta'ing!

Emma wakes with a start, nights later, a sharp gasp escaping her lips, her eyes wide, and her mind alert.

It’s 3:36 in the morning. She knows this because for some reason she’s awake, bolted from her sleep for a reason that she can’t remember. Her alarm clock is glaring the time in big, green, digital numbers, and her apartment is bathed in the fine, luminescent glow of the moon. She can see, though barely, unable to make out the small details of the furniture, clothes, and clutter that surround her.

Emma’s been an insomniac most her life, never getting more than a few hours of sleep on her best of nights. She has nightmares, lots of them, but ever since moving into the new apartment she’s found herself sleeping better, her nightmares becoming less and less frequent. All things good must end though, when it comes to Emma Swan.

She thinks it must have been a nightmare that woke her this time. One she can’t quite catch the details of, but a nightmare just the same.

Confused and frustrated she rises from the plush, white down comforter that she’s cocooned in, making her way to the kitchen in search of a glass of water and maybe some Cheetos. She might as well make a midnight meal of it all, maybe catch up on a few episodes of _Mad Men_ before having to truly get up and get ready for work.

She’s reaching for a glass when a gut wrenching scream floods her senses, the horrible sound filling the otherwise silent night.

It sounds like someone is dying, or being tortured. Dipped in hot wax while having their fingernails ripped off. It sounds like someone is in agony.

She drops the glass suddenly, and it shatters on the checkered floor beneath her. No more screams follow the first, but Emma’s sure now that it’s that scream that woke her in the first place.

She waits a few beats, silent and listening, straining to hear if another scream is soon to follow, but nothing comes. Or at least, another scream doesn’t. She can hear whimpers though, and it’s coming from the neighboring apartment. Killian’s apartment.

_Shit. Killian._

Emma doesn’t even think, she just flings her door open and makes her way over to apartment number one. She doesn’t knock and she doesn’t hesitate, just tries the doorknob, finding it unlocked, and pushes it open.

Maybe it’s the too-earliness of it all, or the sleep deprivation that’s threatening to pull her under any second, but she feels brave in the moment, confident that she can help Killian with this. She has nightmares all the time. Hell, she’s a fucking expert on zero sleep and frenzied dreams. She should get a degree in it maybe, see if Boston U has a program for fucked up minds and deep-rooted insomnia.

She snorts at the thought before a painful whimper makes it’s way across the room, bringing her back to the issue at hand.

She doesn’t even get a chance to look around the apartment, to take in any of the details of Killian Jones’ new home. She just walks across the hardwood floor with slow and careful steps, not wanting to alarm him. Who knows what an ex-navy man would do if he woke up suddenly to an intruder in his house, especially an ex-navy man who seems to suffer from horrible nightmares.

Bracing herself for a few seconds, Emma takes in a deep breath. Waking up from a nightmare is never a pleasant occurrence, and since it’s Killian, she’s planning on this being a more unpleasant awakening than any she’s experienced.

Killian shifts suddenly, turning his face towards her, and Emma can see the pain etched on his features. His face is scrunched up and his eyes are moving rapidly behind his closed lids. He’s clutching his comforter viciously; holding it tight against his chest and he’s even got a bit of a grip on the dull gray t-shirt that he’s wearing. His bad arm is twisted in the sheets, out of sight. He’s drenched in sweat and his hair is plastered to his forehead. He looks so fragile, so small in this moment that Emma’s heart breaks a little.

She kneels down next to the bed, which sits so low to the ground that she ends up eye-level with Killian’s pained face.

“Killian,” she whispers, so low the words fade into the silence easily, as if they were never there.

Emma lightly clears her throat before speaking again.

“Killian,” He whimpers in response, clutching the comforter closer to his chest.

Emma doesn’t know why she does it, maybe it’s instinct, but before she can stop herself she reaches forward and gently sweeps the hair off his forehead, smoothing it down as she whispers his name once more.

Suddenly Killian’s eyes pop open, wide and roving over her face and the area surrounding her, not quite focusing on anything.

After a few seconds his gaze trains on her face and she sees the moment he recognizes that she’s here, kneeling in front of his bed with her hand still resting against his forehead.

He flinches back from her violently, his eyes dark and stormy.

“What are you doing?” He barks out at her, his anger making her withdraw her hand from where it had just been, from where her fingers had just carded through his damp hair.

“You were having a nightmare.” Is all she says, stating the truth and staying resolute in her spot, despite his very apparent anger.

“Your point, Swan?” His voice is dripping in contempt and mockery, her name coming out more like a curse than a name.

“Never mind.” Emma says, annoyance and anger festering inside of her now. She stands up suddenly, walking away from him and heading back toward the door.

“Swan,” He calls out. She stops and turns with her arms crossed and a huff of frustrated air escaping her lips.

Not meeting her eyes or bothering to acknowledge her presence in any other way, his fingers playing with the worn edges of the quilt, he just stares at the comforter that sits wrinkled in his lap.

“I’m sorry.” Is all he says, whispers it into the night air, as if he didn’t even mean for her to hear it.

Emma just nods, turning once more and heading out of apartment number one, wanting desperately to just go back to sleep and pretend this entire night never happened.

* * *

 

She doesn’t see Killian much the weeks following the nightmare incident, but she hears him almost every night. He doesn’t scream, not anymore, just whimpers until it seems that he eventually wakes because the cursing starts at some point.

He doesn’t wake her up, but only because she’s not sleeping. The few hours she does get are filled with dark corners, and large figures. Pain and abandonment, like she’s being thrown into a foster home for the otherworldly, an amped up version of all the shit she went through as a kid, only magnified by a hundred.

She spends most of her time snacking and watching Netflix, maybe catching up on some reading if she’s feeling up to it.

She knows that Killian locks his door now, hears the bolt slide home every night when he finally comes up from the bar.

Emma’s only been down to the bar at night once now, opting to stay in her apartment most of the time, catching up on paperwork and cleaning or cooking or just plain avoiding Killian. That all changes though when she finally has to live up to the _Rabbit Hole_ promise that she made to Ruby all those Saturday’s ago.

Emma isn’t really all that excited to go out with her former high school friends. Mostly because she intentionally lost touch with all of them except for Mary Margaret and David. She just wanted to escape Storybrooke, run as fast and as far as she could from the one place that had made her and broke her all in the same span of two years. No, she doesn’t want to go, but she knows that Ruby will be upset and Mary Margaret will scold her for _at least_ a month if she doesn’t just put her pride away and spend a few harmless hours out with her old friends.

She puts on a form-fitting black dress and some heels for the evening, planning to go simple and elegant, putting a light amount of makeup on her face and leaving her long, blonde hair down in soft waves.

When she steps down the stairs into the bar of the _Jolly_ though she’s wondering if maybe she didn’t go as simple as she thought.

There’s only a few customers in the bar, a table of seven men (she’s seen them around, David calls them the seven dwarves because they all work in the mine a few miles out of town and there are seven of them. David’s brilliant, really.) are crowded around one large oval table that sits in front of the stone hearth, where a small fire is crackling, sending motes of ash and sparks of red embers flitting into the air. They’re all drinking what looks to be large pints of beer, playing a game of cards and paying little attention to her except for a few appreciative glances.

Another man sits at the bar, huddled over a drink and wrapped in a dark brown leather jacket. He’s got short brown hair and a sharp face as he nurses what looks like a shot of scotch or whiskey, some amber tinted fluid.

This particular man looks up the moment he hears Emma’s heels click on the solid wood of the bar floor. When he catches a full view of her he whistles long and low, his eyes wide as he takes her in.

Emma rolls her eyes and tries to stroll past him, but of course the asshole grabs her wrist as she walks past.

Emma sees red as she feels the pressure of his fingers and the sweatiness of his palm sliding across the delicate skin of her wrist. She grabs his own wrist, ripping his hand off of her before bending his fingers so far back that he almost falls out of his bar stool in pain as he howls in agony.

Emma smirks, delighted with herself.

“Bad form to assault my customers, Swan.”

She looks over her shoulder to see Killian coming up to where she’s standing by Mr. Pervert. He’s wearing a black, fitted t-shirt and he has a bar rag slung over his right shoulder. He doesn’t have his prosthetic on, the scarred skin only barely visible in the dimmed lights of the bar, and Emma briefly wonders how he’s able to manage the entire bar without it, but then her anger comes back full force and she finds that, at the moment, she no longer gives a shit about his dexterity.

She notices, after a few seconds, that he has a smile playing across his face and that’s when she realizes that he’s joking.

“Well I’d say grabbing a woman who is clearly not interested is also _bad form_.” Emma spits out, mocking his accent.

Killian’s eyebrows shoot up before they once again lower, a look of pure rage taking over his features.

Killian pulls the bar rag off of his shoulder with his good hand and uses it to lash out at the hand that Mr. Pervert currently has resting above the countertop.

“Oi!” Mr. Pervert says, cradling his now, most likely throbbing, hand against his chest. “What was that for, mate?!”

“Don’t ‘mate’ me you absolute ponce!” Killian raises the bar rag up again and brings it back down harshly on Mr. Pervert’s other hand.

“OW!”

“If I hear about you touching a lady again without her _explicit_ permission you’re getting kicked out of this bar for good. Even if you do buy up all my scotch, you bloody git.” Killian looks like he’s trying to compose himself, his face red and his eyes dark. “You are aware of course, Scarlet, that Ms. Swan here is the new deputy?”

“Deputy?” the man slurs while looking back up at Emma, who’s standing with her arms crossed over her chest, annoyed at both men.

“Aye.” Killian responds before Emma can. “She’s made from fire, that lass, and I’d hate to see what she could do to your pretty face if you so much as lay a finger on her again.”

Scarlet, or whatever his name is, just nods, mumbling something that Emma can’t, and does not care to hear as he soothes his now red hands.

Killian shakes his head at the man before turning toward Emma.

“Sorry about that, love. Will’s a good man, just a bit of ponce when he’s had a nip of scotch. He won’t bother you again, you have my word.”

Emma narrows her eyes at Killian, “I don’t need your word, Killian. I can take care of myself. I don’t need you to act like you’re my superhero, just—God. I have to go.” Emma’s annoyed by the whole night. She’s angry at Will for being a creep and she’s angry at Killian for acting like he has any right to act like he just did, like he’s her protector, or her savior.

He looks a bit taken aback by her outburst, but Emma doesn’t care right now, she’s done with men.

She doesn’t turn back when she walks out the door, heading for her bug and the _Rabbit Hole_ without so much as a glance back at the _Jolly Roger_ and Killian Jones.

* * *

 

Emma gets to the _Rabbit Hole_ around 9:30, walking through the door and perusing the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of her friends.

There’s such a stark difference between the _Jolly Roger Tavern_ and the _Rabbit Hole._ Both are bars, but the _Rabbit Hole_ is loud and obnoxious, filled with too many people and too many smells. The drinks are extravagant and take forever to make, so many ingredients that it seems like the bar must have an entire grocery store stocked below. Whereas the _Jolly Roger_ is comforting and calm, a place to escape to and feel warm, safe (except for Mr. William Pervert, but let’s be real, there are dozens upon dozens of Mr. Perverts to contest with in the _Rabbit Hole,_ compared to the _one_ in Killian’s bar _.) The Jolly Roger_ is less crowded, be that a bad thing or a good thing, but it doesn’t make Emma’s anxiety spike up. It doesn’t make her feel like she needs to put her shackles up the minute she walks through the door.

Emma’s eyes scan the area and she finally spots Ruby in the far corner of the bar, waving Emma over.

When she reaches Ruby, the other woman is balancing a tray of four drinks, all of which are pink and smell crazy good.

“They’re called Flirtinis!” Ruby shouts over the music. “It’s one of their specialties, and it’s delicious!”

Ruby and Emma make their way over to a corner booth where Mary Margaret and Elsa are sitting. Emma’s happy to see Elsa, immediately recognizing the woman. She looks like she used too, tall frame, sharp facial features, long, fine blonde hair, nearly white in the right kind of light. She’s a beautiful woman, had always been beautiful really. An exchange student from Norway during Emma’s senior year, and the two had been in art class together, where they became fast friends. Of all the people who she’d lost contact with (purposefully, of course) once she left Storybrooke, Elsa was always the one who made her pause, made her wish she hadn’t left quite the way she did.

The moment Elsa sees Emma she’s up from her seat and crushing Emma into a hug.

“Emma! It’s so good to see you, it’s been far too long!” Elsa looks at Emma with a dazzling smile on her face, and Emma smiles back.

“It’s good to see you too, Elsa.” Emma says, completely genuine in her sentiment.

The four of them sit down again, Emma next to Mary Margaret and Ruby and Elsa across from them.

She takes a tentative sip of her drink and finds that Ruby was right, the drink is delicious, a subtle hint of champagne coming through the fruity flavor.

“So, Emma, what made you come back to Storybrooke?” Elsa asks after a few seconds of awkward silence.

Emma swallows lightly before responding. “Oh, David offered me a job as deputy. Couldn’t really refuse.” There’s more to the story than that, and Mary Margaret knows it, but the smaller woman doesn’t so much as bat an eyelash at the submission of the truth from Emma, just smiles fondly at her sister-in-law.

“Deputy, that’s fun!” Elsa comments.

“It can be,” Emma laughs, “Or it can be a real pain in the ass. Depending on the day of course. What did you end up deciding to pursue?” She asks Elsa, genuinely curious because Elsa was always one of the smartest people she’d ever come to know, and she could have done just about any profession, if she wanted to.

“Physical therapist,” She says after sipping her drink. “I work over at Storybrooke General with Ruby’s fiancé, Victor.”

“Ruby’s _fiancé_?” Emma asks, looking over at Ruby in surprise. “You never told me!”

“Well the ring’s right there, Emma, you could have asked!” Ruby lifts her left hand up, wiggling her fingers at Emma.

Emma almost chokes at the sight of the ring on Ruby’s finger. It’s _huge._ One large, square shaped diamond, surrounded by _many_ other, smaller stones.

“And before you ask, no, he’s not compensating for _anything_.” Ruby says with a smirk.

Laughter rings throughout the group and Emma feels a bit more at ease. The night isn’t turning out to be as awful as she thought it would be, and she’s actually starting to enjoy her night.

Ruby ends that feeling with one question.

“So what were you doing with Killian Jones the other day?” There’s a hint of animosity in her voice, and even though Ruby doesn’t know the whole story between Emma and Killian she knew enough to not like Killian after senior year, but that dislike seems to have amplified in the past decade.

“We were having lunch.” Emma shrugs, finishing her drink as she waits for Ruby’s reply.

“Come on, Emma. I know you rented the apartment from him.”

Emma sputters on the last dregs of her drink, “How would you know that?” She finally manages to get out.

Ruby rolls her eyes, “Emma, Storybrooke is a small town, everyone knows that.”

“Okay, so what? I rented the apartment from him. Why do you care?” Her words come out sharp and defensive. She’s pissed that Storybrooke really hasn’t changed, and that everyone still can’t mind their own fucking business, even the people who call themselves her friends.

“I care about you.” Ruby says with conviction, but Emma’s not having any of her cryptic answers, instead she replies with a biting tone.

“Okay? That doesn’t answer my question, Ruby.”

Ruby sighs, “Killian Jones is no good. Ever since he got back from his discharge from the Navy he’s been nothing but a nuisance.”

“What’d he do?” Emma asks, feeling defensive on Killian’s part for a reason she can’t quite name.

“Oh I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough, I really don’t want to get into it tonight. All I’m saying is that he’s not any good, Emma. Just be careful.”

“I can take care of myself, Ruby, thanks.” Emma practically spits out, her anger evident. What is with people tonight and trying to “protect” her? Is she putting off some damsel in distress signal?

Silence ensues after the heated conversation, the other three women sipping their drinks while Ruby clicks her fingernails on the tabletop.

“Sometimes I wish it was Liam who came back, not Killian.”

Emma’s head whips up at that, staring wide-eyed at Ruby.

“Ruby!” Mary Margaret exclaims shock laced through her tone.

Elsa’s staring at Ruby too, surprise etched all over her delicate face.

“What?!” Ruby asks, her tone rising. “It’s true. Liam was kind, he was good to everyone.” Ruby looks down at the table.

“What happened to Liam?” Emma asks in a whisper, her voice so quiet she’s not sure if anyone heard her, but they all end up looking over at her.

“You don’t know?” Elsa asks.

Emma shakes her head and looks over at Elsa, “What happened?” She asks again.

Ruby’s the one who answers her, “He died on duty. No one really knows how, they say he drowned.” There are tears in Ruby’s eyes and that’s when Emma remembers that Ruby and Liam dated after high school. She remembers how Ruby was so excited because Liam was a few years older, and she felt so grown up, so ready to start a real relationship with someone who wasn’t a teenage boy--or girl.

“He died?” Emma whispers, more to herself than anyone else. “Oh my God.”

Emma feels like crying, because Liam was everything to Killian. He wasn’t just Killian’s older brother; he was his role model, his hero, the man who practically raised him after everything that happened with their parents. Killian didn’t just lose his hand during this past decade; he lost his best friend.

She’s quiet the rest of the night, even when Ruby apologizes for her outburst and things return to something akin to normal. She just doesn’t know how to process everything. She doesn’t know what to do with this information and she feels a bit lost.

When it nears midnight Emma excuses herself, saying that she wants to get up early tomorrow to make a trip to Portland, when really she just can’t stand another second of sitting in this bar pretending like nothing is wrong.

She makes it back to the _Jolly Roger_ right before last call, slipping past Killian and the dwarves and Mr. William Pervert without so much as a hello.

She can’t do it for one more second, put on a face and pretend to be someone she’s not. Pretend to be happy when she’s not. Pretend to be okay with every piece of information that was just dumped on her, when she’s _not_. Emma Swan may be a tough, no nonsense kind of woman. The kind of woman who saves herself, but that doesn’t mean she can’t _feel._ All she wants to do right now is crawl in her bed and mourn the loss of a man who was never anything but kind to her, even if he was a bit wary of her at first. She wants to cry and drink whiskey and remember how it used to be when everything in life was so much _simpler_.

That’s what she’s going to do, she decides, as she unlocks the door to her apartment, kicking off her heels and throwing her keys on the counter. She’s going to mourn not just Liam, but the life she used to have. The one that didn’t feel quite so scary all the time, where the possibilities were endless and her hope was strong.

The lights in her apartment are off, but the soft glow of the moon bathes the walls. She blindly reaches for some flannel pajama bottoms and an old _Red Sox_ sweater she got at a goodwill once. Barefoot, she pads over to the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of wine and grabbing the bag of Cheetos in the cupboard before burrowing herself in the soft downs of her bed.

She knows she probably shouldn’t be drinking red wine or eating bright orange Cheetos while sitting on her bed with her _very_ white comforter, but she really couldn’t care less at the moment. She doesn’t want to think about what’s not best; she doesn’t want to think at all, really. She just wants to _be_.

About an hour later she hears Killian make his way up the stairs, his footsteps heavy on the old wood. Emma listens carefully as he shuffles toward his apartment door, waiting to hear the slide of the bolt that is meant to tell her to _keep away_ , but it never comes. Instead his door closes with a soft thud, and she hears him walk around his apartment a bit, before all the noises from her neighbor cease, and she’s left alone in blissful silence once more.

Emma gets up to wash her hands of the cheesy residue, before brushing her teeth and pouring the rest of her wine down the drain. She’s tired, wait, no, scratch that. She’s _exhausted._ She’s so glad that tomorrow is Saturday and that she has nothing to do but sleep in and maybe tidy up her apartment. She’s not going to do anything more though, other than eat and sleep and watch Netflix.

Emma falls into a fitful sleep around 3 a.m. and maybe that’s why she hears the scream right away, bolting up from her bed.

This scream is worse than the first she ever heard, she’s almost eighty percent positive that Killian is being murdered, so she doesn’t think, she just gets out of bed and runs over to his apartment, the unlocked door swinging open freely.

When she gets inside she knows that Killian is awake, can feel his eyes on her before she even sees him.

He’s sitting up in bed, staring at her, and he doesn’t look angry, not this time. He just looks resigned, like he figured this would happen, that she would eventually make her way over here, and he’s not going to fight her this time, she’s sure of it.

She hears him sigh, a heavy thing, loud and slightly strangled, as if it’s hard for him to even do that, to let out a bit of air and breathe some back in.

He gets up from his bed slowly, first swinging his legs over the side and burying his face in his hands, but that only lasts a second before he’s up and walking towards her.

“Fancy a drink, Swan?”

He doesn’t even wait for her to respond, just walks past her and heads toward the open door.

“A drink?” She stutters out, bewildered by this odd turn of events.

“Aye. Nip of something strong to tide you over til’ morn? It’s something I find myself indulging in quite frequently.”

Emma knows what he means, sometimes the nightmares are so bad that all you can do is drown them in a bit of alcohol, but she usually does this alone, and certainly not with her ex-boyfriend turned landlord turned neighbor.

“Sure.” Emma says under her breath, and she’s almost positive that Killian isn’t even listening, already heading down to the bar.

When she sits down at one of the bar stool she wonders if she’s making a mistake. Being around Killian in the light of day is hard enough but at night, or more accurately at three in the damn morning, her walls are lowered due to her exhaustion. She’s more open, more giving, and that scares her.

Killian pours them both a finger of rum, sliding the glass over to her while holding his up, waiting for her to clink the two together. She does, albeit nervously, not sure if she’s ready for this type of closeness to Killian Jones: sharing a midnight drink after a fresh nightmare kind of closeness.

He downs his glass in one swift move, before pouring another and lifting his eyes to hers.

“Listen lass, I’m sorry if I wake you with these fits of mine. I’ve been dealing with them for quite some time, but these past few weeks have been worse than usual.”

Emma nods thoughtfully, taking a sip of her rum and thinking on what to say.

“Most of the time you don’t even wake me,” she settles on, “I have a bit of trouble sleeping as well. Insomnia and nightmares don’t mesh well.”

He meets her eyes, the look he’s giving her so earnest that she feels like this is a big moment for them. Like this is one of those moments she’ll look back on in years to come and realize it was a defining one, the type of moment that shaped the rest of their relationship.

“What are they about?” She asks quietly, almost afraid of his reaction.

He chuckles darkly before continuing, “Death.”

_Wow, straight to it, Jones._

“Milah’s?”

He looks up sharply at the mention of the woman’s name, before nodding and tracing the rings of condensation that have collected on the bar top with his finger.

“What about Liam’s?” She wishes she hadn’t said it the moment the words are out of her mouth, but there’s no taking it back now as she waits for his answer, all the while holding her breath.

“Aye, Liam’s too.” He’s not looking at her, just staring down at the tumbler in his hand. He doesn’t ask her how she knows about Liam, or what she knows for that matter, he just continues to stare at his drink, waiting for her to either reply or get up and leave.

“Sometimes mine are about death too.” She says finally, sharing this tiny piece of herself with him because the rum and the chill in the air and the comfort of the darkness are making her weak. Making her feel like she can share anything with anyone, all her deepest secrets, all her worst fears.

She realizes once more, of course, that Killian and her are about as kindred of spirits as you can get. Both so fucked up that they almost make the other look normal.

He nods again, before looking up and finally meeting her eyes. He tilts his glass forward once more, and Emma clinks hers against his, before taking a sip.

“We seem to make quite the pair, huh, Swan?” He’s smiling at her, a small thing that she almost doesn’t catch.

She smiles around the rim of her glass.

“Yeah, yeah we do.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't be too hard on Emma either, she's got some really high walls, and a really shitty past. She's just trying to protect herself, but I promise she'll open up soon!


	7. We'll both get by

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love love love this chapter, so I'm very excited to share it with all of you! We're getting closer and closer to unearthing Killian and Emma's pasts with one another, and this chapter's flashback is especially important. 
> 
> As always, a special and heartfelt thanks to the-lady-of-misthaven for all her beta'ing help.
> 
> Leave a review if you're up for it! :)

_Biology class continues to be a pain in Emma’s ass._

_She knows Killian a bit more now. It’s hard not too, what with Mary Margaret and David insisting that he tag along on every friend activity and group outing.  She wouldn’t mind it so much if he wasn’t such an annoying_ ass.

_It isn’t just that he speaks like he came straight out of a Jane Austen novel, or that he constantly has a string of lovesick freshmen following him around. No, it’s all that and the fact that he just cannot help himself when it comes to getting under Emma’s skin._

_Sure, a lot of people might find that type of thing endearing, but to her, well, it’s just plain irritating._

_“Can you just pass me the damn scalpel, Jones?” She says, keeping her voice down to an agitated whisper._

_“Why of course, milady.” He hands her the scalpel with a mock bow, and Emma seriously considers stabbing him in the eye with the utensil instead of dissecting the squid lying in front of them._

_Their biology class focuses mainly on dissections and Emma honestly couldn’t be more excited. She loves dissections, and in the past her lab partners had always hated them, which was great for Emma, because that meant she got to do all the fun stuff. All the slicing and pinning and probing._

_Killian, however, doesn’t seem to shy away from blood, or guts, or hundreds of squid eggs. Meaning, of course, that Emma has to share all the fun with one of the biggest nuisances this side of the equator._

_“Lass, let me get the beak out.”_

_Emma looks up at him sharply, her eyes wide and her voice raised. “What?! No way! That’s the best part!”_

_“You’ve done everything else, Swan, give me this honor, I beg of thee.” He’s got his hands pressed together like he’s praying. Always one for drama, Killian Jones._

_Emma scoffs, “Oh stop with the Shakespearean theatrics. I called getting the beak out when we started. You can get the ink sac.”_

_“I don’t want the bloody ink sac, Swan!” His voice is much louder than it had previously been, and Emma’s worried that they’re going to start attracting stares soon if she doesn’t try to placate him._

_“Fine, take the pen.” She says coolly, hoping he’ll take the bait and shut up._

_Killian, however, is not one to be deterred, “The pen! Lass, you wound me.” He places his hand over his heart in mock-pain and Emma’s very,_ very _close to just giving up and letting him take the stupid beak when she remembers something._

_“Well I don’t really care what you want, Jones. I’m the best at dissecting. Need I remind you of the incident with the rat?” She’s smiling smugly, knowing that she’s got him now._

_Killian looks properly affronted. “Oi, one pierced lung and suddenly I’m incompetent of taking out the beak! Forgive and forget, love, perhaps that’s a motto you should add to your vernacular?”_

_“Insult, beg, mope all you want, Jones. That beak is mine.”_

_Killian remains silent for a few beats while Emma busies herself with finding the three hearts._

_“How’s this, Swan, you get to take out your precious beak,_ if _I can walk you home today.”_

_Emma gawks at him, so taken aback by his offer and his sudden change of heart when it comes to his beloved beak._

_“Wait, what?”_

_Killian smirks at her obvious surprise. “Let me walk you home, and the beak is all yours. No further complaints from me.”_

_“Fine.” Emma says before she can really process what she’s saying._

_It’s Killian’s turn to be surprised now, his mouth falling open just an inch._

_“Really?” He asks a little breathlessly._

_“Really. Now hand me that pin.”_

 

* * *

 

_Emma’s panicking. She wants to lock herself in a bathroom stall and bang her head against the toilet paper dispenser until she can knock some sense into herself._

_Why? Why, for the love of all that is holy, and good, and right in this world, did she agree to let Killian Jones walk her home?_

_It’s seventh period, and she’s got one more class to go before she has to meet him in front of the gymnasium, and spend a thirty-minute walk with him, and only him._

_She’s never been alone with him in a setting that wasn’t biology class, because David or Mary Margaret or both of them were always there. Always ready to quell whatever feud was going on between Emma and Killian, but now what? What is she supposed to do when they inevitably get into another argument, when she inevitably wants to punch him in the face?_

_She’s got one more class to go until she finds out, and she really hopes that physics goes by slowly._

* * *

_Physics does not go by slowly._

_Physics goes by very, very fast._

_Before Emma knows it she’s standing in front of Killian Jones’ locker, right outside the doors of the gymnasium, waiting for him to make his way back from his eighth period chemistry class._

_When she spots him he’s got one strap of his backpack slung over his shoulder, and he’s talking enthusiastically to a pretty brunette that she’s never seen before._

_Emma’s chest flares with something akin to fire, and she’s not sure what name to put on the emotion that she’s feeling right now, but it’s definitely_ not _jealousy. It feels a lot like anger though; she just doesn’t know why she’s angry._

_Maybe he’s late. Emma checks her watch and finds that, yes, Killian is technically late, but only by a couple of minutes and that’s not something to get angry about. Either way, Emma holds onto the late theory and crosses her arms over her chest, staring daggers at him._

_“Swan!” He calls out when he sees her, picking up his pace with the brunette tagging along behind him._

_He’s got a huge smile on his face when he reaches her and he looks a little breathless._

_“This is Belle,” he introduces the pretty brunette who smiles sweetly at Emma. “She works in the library, and she thinks she can get me a job restocking shelves during my study hall seventh period!”_

_He seems so excited at the prospect of a job that Emma feels all her anger dissipate. His simple joy replacing her burning anger with something sweet and warm that blooms right behind her heart._

_She’s not going to put a name on that feeling either, because it’s nothing worth naming._

_“Belle, this is Emma Swan, the loveliest lass in all of Mr. Smith’s biology class.” He winks at Emma after he’s finished with his introduction, and Emma’s not sure if the heat that’s rising to her face is from anger or...something else._

_“Hello,” Belle says, sticking her hand out for Emma to shake._

_“Hi, Belle. Nice to meet you.” Emma says, grasping the other girl’s hand in her own._

_Belle smiles, “Well I’ll leave you two to it. Stop by the library on Friday at lunch, Killian, I’ll be there and we can introduce you to the librarian.”_

_Belle turns away and continues walking down the hall, which prompts Killian to direct his full attention once again on Emma, giving her one of the largest smiles she’s ever seen._

_Killian switches a few books out from his locker and grabs his jacket, turning back to Emma with the same smile. “Ready to go, Swan?”_

_Emma sighs loudly, more loudly than she actually means to._

_“Let’s just get this over with, Jones.”_

_Killian’s smile falters a bit at her tone, and she immediately feels bad. She didn’t have to be so rude to him, but it’s like she can’t help herself. For some reason her natural instinct is to push him away. Maybe it’s because of all the people she’s allowed herself to get close to who just left her in the end. Or maybe it’s because she can’t let herself get close to him because Killian Jones feels like the kind of person that could completely wreck her if he left._

_“Listen, lass.” He sighs and runs his hand through his hair, not meeting her eyes as he speaks the next words. “You don’t have to let me walk you home out of pity. I’m afraid I don’t very much feel like spending a near half hour with someone who feels like they’re being forced into letting me accompany them.”_

_Emma’s pride deflates a bit at his little speech, and she suddenly feels like the biggest bitch in Storybrooke for being so rude to Killian._

_Instead of replying she just starts walking away, towards the back doors of the school that lead into the teacher’s parking lot._

_“Come on, Jones, this is a one time thing and I’m not going to wait for you to catch up.” She says it lightly, thrown over her shoulder with a slight smile._

_He doesn’t have to be told twice, bounding after her in long strides almost instantaneously. When he reaches her side he smiles down at her, and Emma thinks that maybe this won’t be as bad as she thought._

_They end up walking in silence for the first half of the journey. Neither one of them wanting to break the peace that they seem to have discovered._

_“Do you even live anywhere near me?” Emma asks, finally breaking the ice._

_Killian laughs softly, “No, actually. I live down by the harbor.”_

_“The harbor?!” Emma practically screeches, “That’s on the other side of town! A twenty minute walk from where David and I live!”_

_“Aye, I’m aware of that, Swan.”_

_“Why’d you insist on walking me home then, if you’re just making it harder on yourself?”_

_Killian looks down at her question, suddenly finding the grass beneath his feet much more interesting than her face._

_“Is it a crime to want to walk a pretty lass home?”_

_Emma snorts. “Do you use that line on all the girls you walk home?”_

_“Only you, Swan. Only you.” His voice is soft, and Emma is afraid to meet his eyes, too afraid of what she’ll find there if she looks hard enough._

_By the time they reach Main Street the silence between the two of them has Emma on edge. She doesn’t know what to say, and right now it seems like he’s at loss for words as well. Which in of itself is a huge shocker, because Emma has known Killian Jones for maybe a month and in that short amount of time he’s never been without something to say, be it for better or worse._

_“We’re about halfway to both my house and the harbor, if you wanna just--you know split up here. You don’t have to walk me all the way home.” Emma offers up, thinking maybe she can cut the awkwardness short for both of them._

_“Nonsense, Swan. You got the beak, and I get to walk you home._ All the way _home.” He pauses, “Besides, Liam won’t be home for a few more hours, and I really despise being in the house alone.”_

_Emma’s surprised by the small piece of information that he gives her of his home life. He hasn’t mentioned his brother since that first day at lunch._

_“Liam’s your brother, right?”_

_Killian nods, “Aye. One and only.”_

_Emma’s silent for a beat, kicking a stone on the sidewalk and watching it ricochet off the light pole._

_“How’d you both end up here in Storybrooke? I mean it’s kind of obvious you’re not from the states.” She smirks at him, catching a glimpse of his smile through her peripheral vision._

_“No, we’re certainly not from the states.” He sighs before continuing, as if to gather his thoughts before he speaks. “Liam and I moved here in late August from a town called Whitby in North Yorkshire.”_

_Emma’s face must look confused because Killian laughs._

_“Whitby lies on the coast, about five hours north of London.”_

_Emma nods, thinking that she really needs to catch up on the geography of the UK, now that she knows someone who hails from the great kingdom._

_“We loved it there. Both of us were born and raised in the town. My father was a fisherman and my mother an excellent baker. She never opened up an actual store, but everyone in town knew of her.” He’s smiling now, big and wide and Emma’s never seen him this genuinely happy, this excited about something before. “Enya Jones, the best baker in all of England.” He looks over at her then, “That’s what my father always said, and my mum would get so angry at him. She was born in Ireland, never really took to England.”_

_“She sounds lovely.” Emma comments, unsure of what to say, not wanting to break whatever spell has come over him that led him to confess such things to her. It’s beautiful, the way he speaks of his family, making Emma yearn, more than ever, for a lifetime of happy memories that only a family can provide._

_“She was.” He’s silent for a beat, a forlorn look on his face. “She passed a few years ago. Cancer.”_

_Emma nods, her mouth suddenly dry and her eyes suddenly damp._

_“My father--well he lost it. My mother’s name means fire in Irish, and for my father, my mum was his fire, his light. That’s what everyone said at least. That when she passed, his fire was snuffed out, and he was left in darkness.”_

_Emma watches as Killian swallows, waiting for him to continue but suddenly feeling an overwhelming sense of dread as to what he’s about to say, about what horror he’s about to unleash from his memory._

_“He uh--he went rogue for a bit. Drinking too much, slacking at his job. We ended up losing our house, and my father and I--Liam was gone at this point, left for university--we moved onto my father’s ship. A small thing it was, only a tiny captain’s quarter for the two of us. Anyway--uh,” Killian wipes at his nose with the end of his shirt sleeve and Emma feels awful, wishing desperately that she never asked him anything about his past, even if she never could've guessed it would have led to this._

_“My father left one night, said he was going out to get some food, and he well--” Killian coughs, “He never came back. I waited a few days, just in case, but no luck I’m afraid.” He’s smiling now, barely, but Emma knows what that smile means--it’s the kind of smile someone uses to hide a look of pain, and Killian’s very good at it._

_“I got in contact with Liam eventually, who left University and came to take me under his care. Liam sold all of my father’s possessions, even the boat, and he decided it would be best if we left Whitby. He found a job overseas, in Storybrooke as it would turn out, at the docks, and we’ve been here ever since.” Killian shrugs, his eyes downcast and his dark locks falling on his forehead. He’s done talking, that much Emma can tell._

_She’s not sure why she does it. She’s never sure why she does half of the things she does when she’s around Killian, but this action, more than all of the rest, surprises her, and she’s sure him, the most._

_Emma grabs Killian’s hand, lacing her fingers through his and squeezing briefly. Just that small amount of contact makes her skin burn, like she’s caught on fire, but she doesn’t want anyone or anything to douse out these flames._

_He looks at her in shock when she grabs his hand, his eyes wide and slightly watery, but he doesn’t pull away, or flinch from the contact, if anything he grips her hand tighter._

_She lets go his hand, a little shocked both by hers actions and his. He doesn’t retreat, his hand just swaying in the space that hers had occupied._

_“Thanks for sharing that with me, Killian, you uh--” she coughs, trying to find the right words. “You didn’t have to. I know that can’t be easy for you.”_

_He nods, “Normally it’s not, but with you, Swan,” he shrugs, “for some reason I’m finding that everything is...easier.”_

_She doesn’t know what to say to that, but they’ve finally reached the Nolan’s house and she’s saved from having to respond._

_“I’ll see you tomorrow?” He asks, something akin to hope lighting in his eyes and flowing through his words._

_“Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow, Killian.” She whispers with a slight nod, a bit unsure and a bit confused and wanting nothing more than to crawl into her bed and wonder how she was able to wake up today and have everything in her life go from normal to weird in a little over eight hours._

_He smiles at her as she retreats down the front walk, and he waits until she’s inside before turning around and walking back the way they came._

_Emma slumps against the front door once she’s safely inside, her heart thumping wildly against her chest. She settles her palm over the rapid pulse, begging it to slow down, but knowing that it won’t. It’s always on high alert whenever Killian Jones is involved._

* * *

 

_Emma lets Killian walk her home the next day, only because they have yet another dissection (a mink this time, a nasty creature) and Killian agrees to shave the thing if he can have just “One more afternoon stroll, Swan? Hmm?”_

_Emma agrees, albeit reluctantly, unsure if Killian is expecting for her to suddenly offer up some confession of past woes, now that he’s dug up his past and presented them to her, tears and all._

_She’s pleasantly surprised when Killian doesn’t push her, in any way, to tell him about her past. She’s pleasantly surprised by that, but she’s even more surprised when she tells him of her own volition._

_“I’ve always been alone.” She says, during a quiet lull in their conversation, and she thinks maybe she’s shocked herself more than she’s shocked him, but it’s a close call, because Killian trips when she says the words. He falls halfway to the ground, catching himself on a pile of dirt, before righting himself and looking at her imploringly, giving her room to continue or stop if she pleases._

_“My parents left me on the side of the road when I was born, and um--” She pulls at the end of her sleeve, playing with the loose string that hangs off the end, twisting it around her pinky finger as she tries to find the courage to continue._

_“I was adopted, which is the usual case when it comes to infants. My adopted parents, the Swan’s, as it turns out, ended up giving me back to the foster care system when they had a kid of their own.”_

_Killian doesn’t speak, doesn’t interrupt, and she’s thankful for that because she just needs to get it all out. If she stops for too long she’ll think about it too much and she’ll never finish._

_“I moved from foster home to foster home after that, but no one wanted me, not for keeps anyway, never for keeps.”_

_She can feel the tears forming in the back of her eyes and she takes a few beats to compose herself, taking deep, calming breathes._

_One. Two. Three._

_“At least not until Ruth, but there’s still a part of me that’s scared she’ll realize I’m not worth it either, and I’ll be sent away again, like always.”_

_She’s done talking, and she waits for him to respond, to laugh at her, to tell her she’s right, she’s not worth it._

_He grabs her hand instead, entwining their fingers together and squeezing, just like she did the day before, but he doesn’t let go, not until she has to walk up to the front door of the Nolan residence, and even then it’s a reluctant thing, him withdrawing his hand from hers._

_“I’ll see you tomorrow?” She says, doubt laced through every syllable, still scared he’ll reject her now that he knows the ugly truth._

_“Aye. And every day after that.” He whispers the last part, but she catches the words, smiling to herself as she walks up the front steps of the house, her heart beating a familiar tattoo against her chest._

* * *

 

_It’s an unspoken agreement they share._

_It’s unspoken, that Killian Jones will walk Emma Swan home everyday after school, following that second afternoon._

_It’s unspoken, that they divulge their secrets to each other, that they share the worst and the best parts of themselves with one another as they trudge through mud and rain and early October sun._

_It’s unspoken that Killian Jones and Emma Swan are best friends. They never say it out loud, but she knows, in the furthest corners of her mind, she knows it to be true. Everyone at school knows as well, and everyone else they know really._

_It’s unspoken that they hold hands as they make the thirty minute trek to her home, never once letting their fingers disconnect, even when they take a shortcut through the woods and have to jump across a creek, their hands never separating as the maneuver their way from slippery stone to slippery stone._

_It’s platonic, she reasons, just friends being friends, but even so, she knows it’s a lie. Her feelings for Killian Jones are, day by day, slipping further and further away from friendship, and closer and closer to something more, something different. She’s always been afraid of change, but this doesn’t feel abrupt, or forced. It feels right, natural even._

_It feels like coming home._

* * *

 

After their shared midnight drink, Emma finds that being around Killian is much easier than it had previously been.

She sees him nearly every morning on his way down to his office and on her way out the door. They share greetings and occasionally a cup of coffee if Emma can get up early enough.

Other than that everything between them remains the same, they’ve just morphed into friendly neighbors.

That is until about a week after the late night drink incident, when Killian shows up at the station around noon.

“Killian, how are you?” Emma hears David say as she’s hunched over a particularly frustrating piece of paperwork. Her head whips up at the mention of Killian’s name, her eyes landing on his leather-clad form as he swaggers his way over to where the two of them are. He’s carrying a brown paper bag that’s covered in grease stains and that has Granny’s logo printed on the front.

“Killian?” She says, more quietly than she intended.

“I’m well, mate. How’s the wife?” Killian says, responding to David’s question but sending her a quick smile to let her know that he heard her.

“Mary Margaret’s great, stressed out a little by a particularly rowdy kid in her class named Felix, but other than that, she’s, yeah she’s great.”

“Glad to hear it.” Killian says, bringing one of his hands forward to latch onto his belt buckle, looking to all the world like he’s perfectly at ease, like he belongs here.

“Can I help you with anything, Killian?” David asks, no doubt confused by Killian’s

sudden, unexplained appearance.

Killian brings the brown bag forward, motioning towards Emma with it.

“Figured I’d return a previous gesture of kindness by bringing some lunch from Granny’s for Swan and I to share.” He winks at her, a sly grin on his face.

David sends Emma a questioning look, making sure that she’s okay with the turn of events for the day. She just nods, knowing that he won’t leave until he’s absolutely sure she’s comfortable with all of this.

Sure enough, once Emma gives him the okay, David seems to breathe a very visible sigh of relief, nodding to himself before making an excuse to leave.

“Okay, well, I’ve just finished my lunch break so I’m off to settle a dispute down at the docks. Leroy got a little too drunk again last night and damaged some property.”

“Best of luck, mate!” Killian calls after David as he rushes out of the station, but not before sending Killian a skeptical look, like he still doesn’t trust the other man with his baby sister.

Once the two of them are finally alone, Killian’s eyes train on Emma’s, and her breath hitches when she sees just how blue they look today.

“So what do you say love? Lunch?” He smiles at her and it’s a shy thing, tentative and barely there, like he’s afraid that she’ll say no.

“Grilled cheese?” She asks suddenly, and Killian looks taken aback, his eyebrows furrowing at her question.

“Of course.”

“Fries?”

“Onion rings.”

Emma smiles up at him from her seat, “Well then sit down, sailor.”

* * *

 

Emma realizes, only a week later, that her and Killian have fallen into a bit of a routine.

He stops by the station every day at noon bringing some manner of lunch (thankfully not Granny’s _everyday_ , She’s pretty sure she would have combusted by now if that were the case.) They spend their lunch breaks talking about innocent things, like the weather, or Will Scarlet’s (aka Mr. Pervert’s) latest blunders. They talk about Killian’s decision to add a new beer on tap, or Emma’s ongoing obsession with _Mad Men_ and Cheetos. They just--talk, like friends would.

They’re friends, in a way, Emma would reason. Though the thought of calling him her friend out loud makes her all sorts of queasy. That’s what they were to begin with: friends. Great friends, close friends, she even considered him her _best_ friend, the younger Killian Jones.

Now though, so much has happened between them, some good, most bad and she’s wary of wandering into that territory again, because that gives him power over her. Power to break her. He’s already broken her once, and she hasn’t been whole since. She can’t break anymore, because she’s not sure she would survive it.

Label or not, Emma knows that Killian and her are getting closer, and though it does scare her, it also makes her happy. It feels familiar, and it feels a little like coming home. Given time, she’s sure she can be Killian’s friend again, but that’s all, just a friend, only a friend.

As Killian’s _almost-maybe_ friend, Emma feels more relaxed around him, and so, when his screams wake her once more a few days later, Emma doesn’t have any qualms about going over and helping him through it.

His door is unlocked when she makes her way out of apartment two and takes the four steps over to apartment one.

When she walks into Killian’s apartment she finds him standing over the stove, stirring something in a small black pot. He’s wearing a pair of low hanging grey sweatpants and no shirt, his hair mussed and sticking up every which way.

Emma swallows, heat blooming on her cheeks as she takes in his bed ruffled appearance. He looks good, even half asleep, and she really can’t believe the unfairness of it all.

He looks over at her when she enters, one eyebrow raised as he stirs the pot with a long wooden spoon.

“Swan?”

“You okay?” She responds.

He looks confused for a moment, his eyebrows furrowing and his constant stirring faltering a bit.

“Aye? Why wouldn’t I--” and then his previous look of confusion morphs into a much darker expression. “Oh _bloody hell_ did I wake you again?”

Emma just nods, unsure of what to say. She’s not here to yell at him, or get angry at him for doing something that he can’t control, like crying out when the nightmares get too awful.

“I’m sorry Swan, I didn’t even know that I made any noise. I just...woke up.”

“It’s okay, Killian, really. I just...wanted to check on you, make sure you weren’t being murdered or abducted by aliens.”

He chuckles at that, “As you can see Swan I am stab wound free and my feet are planted firmly on the ground. No murderers or aliens this November eve, I’m afraid.”

Emma laughs at that, a short, small thing that echoes throughout the apartment. Killian’s staring at her, his eyes soft and a gentle smile playing on his lips. When he notices that she’s caught him staring he coughs loudly, lowering his head and scratching behind his ear.

Eventually he breaks the silence, “Well, love since you’re already awake and here, how about some hot chocolate and a game of cards?”

“Cards?” Emma asks, confusion and surprise lingering in her words.

He smiles, “Aye, cards. Perhaps a game of go-fish to tide us over until morning?”

It’s such a silly offer, such a ridiculous request, but Emma finds that she’d rather sit in Killian’s quiet apartment, sipping hot chocolate, and playing a dozen games of go-fish than go back to her empty one and try to catch onto the coattails of sleep.

“Sure, why not?” She responds, ambling her way over to one of the bar stools that sit at Killian’s kitchen island, picking the stool that rests directly across from where he’s standing and stirring what she now knows to be hot chocolate.

He smiles back at her, the crinkles around his eyes much more prominent now that she’s closer to him.

While Killian continues to stir the hot chocolate and prepare two mugs Emma allows herself to finally get a true glimpse of the apartment that Killian claims as his own.

The apartment is bigger than hers. It’s still a studio apartment, just one large rectangular room and a bathroom no doubt.

The kitchen rests in the left-side corner, opposite the entrance. The cabinets are a light teal color and the counters are white marble, smooth under her fingertips as she traces the swirls and patterns in the cool stone. The floors are made of old, dark hardwood and a large, plush blue area rug takes up the entire space of the living area. A leather sofa, a coffee table, and a large stone fireplace that still seems to emanate warmth even in its current state of disuse complete the look. Emma doesn’t have to look to know there is a bed in the far right corner of the room, she’s seen in before. The walls are covered in windows and pieces of art, and there’s a large mural on the far right wall, the wall that is shared by her own apartment. The mural is hard to make out in the darkness but it looks like a dark mountain shrouded in trees and fog, the lines choppy and undefined. She thinks it’s beautiful, simple and unique.

What Emma notices most of all is the tidiness of the whole apartment. The way everything has a place and nothing seems to be out of said place. It’s the type of space that she had figured Killian would have: simple, purposeful, and clean. He’d always been such a neat freak, and though his office doesn’t match his apartment, Emma is glad to find that he still has a bit of the old Killian inside of himself.

She hears him cough, and immediately trains her eyes back on him, embarrassed to be caught clearly surveying his entire living space.

“Do you like it?” he asks, a hopeful hint to his voice, as if Emma’s opinion of his home is of utmost importance to him.

“It suits you.” She says in way of response, offering up a small smile.

His face lights up at that, a full on grin taking over his features as he pours out two cups of hot chocolate, topping both with whipped cream and one with cinnamon, before glancing her way.

“Do you still take it with cinnamon?”

Emma’s eyebrows furrow in confusion before nodding. Watching him as he tops the other mug with a healthy dose of her favorite spice, she can’t help but to feel surprised that he not only remembers but seems to take the drink the way she always had. Like he still carries bits and pieces of Emma Swan with him.

Killian slides the mug over to her, and Emma takes a tentative sip of the hot liquid, nearly groaning out loud at the familiar taste. He smiles along the rim of his mug as he watches her, which, in turn makes Emma blush furiously.

Killian sets his mug down on the counter with a loud thump, before pulling out a deck of cards from a random drawer in the kitchen.

“Alright, Swan are you ready to lose?”

Emma scoffs, “Bring it, Jones.”


	8. Was a gray-blue grave and a short red dress

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You finally find out why everyone in town hates Killian! Sorry for the long wait on that...enjoy! And leave a review if you're able to! They make me so happy and help with the writing process immensely.
> 
> P.S. Sorry for the late update. My internship is kind of killing me. Just a bit.

_Emma had always loved October. Well, she’d always loved autumn in general, but October was by far her favorite month. The mild chill in the air, the colors of the leaves, everything about the season appealed to her. She even liked her walks home with Killian more and more the closer it got to November._

_Killian had been walking her home everyday since that first fateful Monday, the two swapping secrets and stories, and always trying to find the most creative routes. At first Emma thought that they were trying to find longer, windier routes because Killian “loved a challenge”, but as the days progressed and the weeks flew by Emma knew that it was just so they could spend more time together, neither one of them wanting their so few private moments together to end._

_For some reason, the idea of them spending time together outside of school and outside of their walks home never crossed her mind. That is until Killian stops her on her way out of the school doors the Friday before Halloween. She thought he had been following her; ready to start their next adventure, but he grabbed her by the elbow instead, pulling her back toward him and the fluorescent-lit hallways of Storybrooke High._

_“Hold on a minute there, Swan.” He has a smile on his face, the kind of smile that Emma has come to associate with bad decisions and rule breaking._

_“What are you planning?” She asks warily._

_He smirks at her, raising one of his eyebrows, “Tsk-tsk, Swan, patience please. Mustn’t ruin the surprise now.”_

_Emma groans as Killian drags her out of the main lobby of the school, pulling her down a back hallway that lies by the gymnasium._

_“The music room?” She asks when he leads her into the room where both the band and orchestra practice during fifth and seventh period respectively._

_“Quite perceptive aren’t we?” He asks with a joking grin on his face. He’s teasing her on purpose, and usually Emma would pretend to be annoyed by this, but she can’t find it in her to pretend any longer, instead smiling back at him fondly._

_“Come, come, Swan, take a seat.” He says as he leads her toward the bench that sits in front of the large grand piano in the far corner of the room._

_She sits down gingerly, unsure of what’s going on and suddenly worried that maybe this is all a part of some elaborate prank. That in thirty seconds Killian will start a countdown that leads to Emma getting a bucket of ice water dumped over her head, or maybe she just sat in gum without knowing it._

_Killian must see the panicked look on her face (always reading her like “An open book, Swan”) because he sits down next to her and smiles, taking her hand in his._

_“Relax love, I’ve nothing nefarious planned. Only good things for my Swan.” He pats her hand twice before letting go and busying himself with opening the lid of the piano and exposing the keys._

_He doesn’t give her time to focus on how he called her_ his _Swan. Before she knows it he’s got his fingers on the keys and the room is being filled with the sound of notes and chords and other musical terms that she doesn’t know._

_It’s a beautiful sound, but she’s never heard the song, so she just stares in awe as Killian’s long, graceful fingers play note after lovely note._

_After what seems like hours, but was most likely minutes, Killian looks up at her, a wide smile on his face. The blue of his eyes look like the ocean in that moment and all Emma wants is to drown in them._

_He refocuses his gaze back to the task at hand, but Emma just stares at him. Maybe she should have known that spending time with Killian Jones would do this to her. Maybe she should have known weeks ago that her feelings for him were much more than friendship, but right now, in this moment, sitting with him in an abandoned music room, listening to him play beautiful pieces of music for her, she realizes that she likes Killian Jones. Not as a classmate, not as a friend, but as something more._

_Suddenly Emma’s hands feel extremely sweaty, and her fight or flight mode is telling her to fly, fly, fly as far away from this situation as she can, because liking someone like she likes Killian gives them power over her. Power to break her. She knows this because she’s liked plenty of foster families before, and when those families finally decided that she was no longer good enough, well, that hurt like a bitch._

_Emma doesn’t notice when Killian stops playing, too caught up in her own dilemma, so when she feels his hand on hers she jerks away violently, nearly falling off the bench in her haste to get away from him._

_“Emma?” He asks, all worry and confusion laced in his voice, his hand still hovering over the space where hers had just been._

_She looks up at him and wants to cry at the sight because he looks so hurt, so sad and defeated._

_“Did you not like it? I’m sorry I wasn’t thinking, I should have just walked you home, and I promise this won’t happen again. I’m sorry, Sw--”_

_She cuts off his endless string of apologies with the firm press of her lips against his, surging towards him on the bench, surprised that she hadn’t knocked him off, and wanting desperately for him to know that she had liked it, she’d liked every moment of him playing for her. In fact she likes everything about him, every annoying, infuriating detail, she likes all of it._

_He didn’t respond to the kiss at first, which makes Emma’s heart drop from her chest to the floor, rattling around in her stomach on the way down. He doesn’t feel the same way, and she could have sworn he did, could have sworn he liked her like she likes him, but she was wrong. How could she have been so stupid, to think that anyone could want her like that?_

_She releases his lips from hers, pulling back in utter embarrassment and regret. Now she’ll have to see him every day in class, at lunch, outside of school with David and Mary Margaret and pretend that she hadn’t just tried to jump him in the school’s music room, but before she can get far enough away he’s grabbing her arm and pulling her closer to him._

_His mouth is back on hers in an instant, raw and hot and desperate, and Emma squeaks from his sudden ferocity. His hand finds its way to her waist and he pulls her closer as the other one reaches for the back of her head, running his fingers through the strands of golden hair, and he kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her._

_When they finally break apart, both breathing heavily, he rests his forehead against hers and smiles, bright and wide and happy. She can’t help but smile back, his joy contagious._

_“That was--” He starts, his voice a breathless whisper._

_“Perfect.” She responds, nudging her nose against his. He chuckles at her response, bringing his hand forward to trace the line of her jaw while he leans back slightly to kiss the tip of her nose._

_“Aye. Perfect.”_

* * *

 

Emma’s working the night shift (more like a night shift that leads into a very early morning shift) one fine Friday turned Saturday when she gets a frantic call from Killian.

It’s around five a.m. when he calls, and Emma’s almost off, she just has to wait one more hour, so she’s getting a little fidgety. Rolling from one side of the office to the other, and singing along to Disney songs. So when the phone rings during her encore performance of “Kiss the Girl” the sharp noise startles her so badly that she actually falls out of her chair. _Ass on floor_ , falls out of her chair. She even bangs her head a little on the large plastic pot that houses one of Mary Margaret’s attempts at using stupid houseplants to quote: “brighten the workspace, guys”.

“ _Ouch_.” Emma says pointedly at the stupid fern, rubbing her head before turning her gaze to glare at the phone that’s currently ringing.

She scrambles up from her position and lightly jogs over to her desk, taking one deep breath to regain her lost composure, she picks up the phone.

“Sherriff’s station.” She says, coolly, collectively. Or at least she likes to think so.

“Emma?” Comes a rough and distressed voice that she immediately recognizes as Killian’s.

“Killian? What’s wrong? Are you okay?” She’s surprised by the panic that she hears in her own voice, but pushes the thought aside and focuses on the real problem, which is why the hell is Killian Jones calling the sheriff’s station at five in the morning?

“Swan, _The Jolly Roger’s_ been vandalized, and-- _fuck_ I just--could you come down here please? Bring David maybe, I’m not sure, just...please.” He’s talking too fast, and Emma’s not even sure if she’s heard him correctly but she knows that there’s something wrong with the bar, and she knows that she needs to get down there.

“Okay, Killian, I’ll call David and we’ll be there soon. Don’t panic, it’s going to be fine.”

Killian responds with a simple “Thanks, Swan.” before hanging up, but she can tell by his tone that he doesn’t sound convinced with the whole “It’s going to be fine” spiel.

She calls David and asks him to meet her down at _The Jolly Roger,_ talking over his early morning grumblings and telling him to grab some coffee on his way over, she’ll meet him at the bar.

It’s not that she can’t handle a vandalism call on her own, it’s just that her shift’s about over, so David’s going to be the one filing all the paperwork during the day, and she’d rather not spend an hour or two giving him a full report of the incident.

Emma locks up the station as quickly as she can, dropping her set of keys three, count them, three times before she even makes it out the door.

The drive to _The Jolly Roger_ is a short one, When she pulls up in front of the bar, she gets out of her bug slowly, her hair blowing in front of her eyes from the early morning wind. A gasp escapes her lips and her eyes widen in an attempt to decipher if what she’s currently seeing is real, if the mess that lies before her is something that really isn’t just a part of her imagination.

Killian is waiting in the front of the bar, his hair a mess, and his clothes beyond wrinkled, a few buttons on his blue shirt are fitted into the wrong holes and his shoes are mismatched. It’s the worst she’s ever seen him (even so he still looks way too fucking hot for his own good).

“Killian, what _happened_?”

“It would appear that one of our lovely residents finally decided to take more action into running me out of town.” He sweeps his hand over the area outside of the bar, over the thousands of pieces of shattered glass that have settled on the sidewalk.

“Did someone throw a rock through your front window?” She asks, her voice much more subdued than she had expected. This is horrible, and shocking, and it makes her more upset than she ever would have thought.

Before Killian can answer David drives up in his truck. Emma looks back over at Killian to catch him running his hand through his hair as he looks at the mess.

“What happened?” David’s question is asked in a calmer, more authoritarian voice than Emma’s was just few seconds before. He doesn’t live here like Emma does. He doesn’t know Killian like Emma does. He doesn’t know what this act of vandalism will do to Killian’s already rampant sense of self-hatred.

“One of Storybrooke’s finest decided to leave me a bit of a gift.” Killian says, gesturing once again to the broken window.

“Do you know around what time this happened?” David asks while pulling out a notebook and jotting a few things down.

Killian shrugs. “Probably about forty-five minutes ago? I heard the crash from upstairs and I ran down as fast as I could but by the time I got down here whoever did this was--gone.”

“Do you know what was used to break the window?” Emma asks this time, putting any personal feelings aside and focusing solely on the task at hand.

“I uh--I found a rock on the floor inside.” His voice is a small thing, and Emma has to lean in a bit to even catch the words that he speaks.

“Can we see it?” She asks, trying to make her voice as gentle and as soothing as possible.

Killian nods before going back inside the bar. It doesn’t take very long for him to come out again, but when he does he’s holding a large rock in his hand. He hands it over to Emma carefully, like it’s dangerous, like it’s a bomb that could go off at any second.

There isn’t much that they can do with the evidence. Storybrooke’s sheriff station isn’t big enough to have a massive budget with a forensics department or anything. All they can really do with the knowledge that a rock was used to break the window is help the local newspaper write the article better. She can see the headline now: _The Jolly Roger Bar, Owned by Local Pariah, Vandalized With Large Stone._ It’ll be the story of the year.

“This is my fault.” The words are spoken with such certainty, tainted with such strong amounts of self-loathing, that Emma’s head shoots up almost comically fast.

“Killian, no it’s not. This is the fault of the actual person who, you know, threw a rock through your front window!” Emma says, practically desperate in her need to make him understand. To make him realize that this is in no way his fault.

“I shouldn’t have even opened this bar, Swan. I shouldn’t have even come back to Storybrooke!” He’s practically shouting now, his anger lighting in his blue eyes and contorting his face into something beautiful yet terrifying at the same time. “This place in on the historical registry, Emma! That window was the original window that was installed hundreds of years ago! And I did this. I brought this town’s hatred upon myself and now, because of me, a piece of this town’s history is destroyed.”

“Killian,” She reaches out to touch his arm but he jerks away from her, stepping back toward the dark confines of the empty bar.

“Just...I shouldn’t have called you both out here. I’m not going to press charges and I’ll clean this up myself.” Without another word Killian turns toward the open door, storming inside. She hears the door to the basement slam shut after a few tense seconds and the silence that follows is nearly overwhelming.

“Well...I’ve got the report handled.” David says from behind her “Why don’t you check on him?”

Emma sighs. “Yeah, I guess I should.”

* * *

 

She finds him in his office, holding a leather bound flask in his hand, his head tilted back and his legs crossed underneath him.

He takes a swig from his flask as Emma enters the room, her feet sounding loudly on the wooden steps.

“Hey,” She says weakly, before his head tilts forward and his eyes meet hers. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t respond, just holds the flask out for her to take. She doesn’t hesitate, cradling the warm leather in her hand and pressing it against her lips, letting the burn of the rum give her the courage she needs to start this conversation.

She hands the flask back to him before edging closer, leaning against his desk, her palms resting on the edges. He remains silent and Emma knows that she’s going to have to be the one to break this silence. Eventually she does so, nudging her knee against his foot.

He looks up at her then, his eyes rimmed in red and the bags under them prominent, but neither of these things take away the beautiful, ocean blue of his eyes. She could drown in them. Has before. Is scared to once again.

She nods toward the stairs, “What was all that about?”

He sighs, taking another swig of rum before capping the flask and letting it rest in the cradle of his lap. His hand runs through his hair again, the longer black strands falling on his forehead and making Emma feel the sudden urge to sift her fingers through the black silk that is his hair. Instead she clasps her hands together, wringing the digits a little too harshly.

“I uh-” he coughs loudly, clearing his throat before continuing. “When I first ventured back to Storybrooke, all those years ago, I was in a bad place. I’d lost Liam, I’d lost Milah, I’d lost my hand, I’d uh--I’d lost you.” He whispers the last three words, but he doesn’t stop his story, doesn’t give her time to think about it for even a second, just continues on.

“I came back a bit of a wreck. Lost, alone, angry. I was a whole mess of emotions, and I’d...acted poorly. I drank a lot, every day, all day, I was known as the very inebriated Jones brother, the loser Jones brother, the one who shouldn’t have come back.”

Emma gasps at his harsh words, it comes out involuntarily but he smiles up at her.

“Now, now, Swan, don’t worry about me. I know what the townsfolk think of me, and I’ve come to accept it. Though I would have to agree with most of the things they say. I was a right git back then. Drank myself into a stupor, vandalized and harassed practically everyone. It’s no wonder they hated-- _hate_ me.” He shrugs weakly.

“I would assume that most of the dislike, however, came from many of the rumors that revolved around Milah and Liam’s death.”

“Rumors?” Emma breathes, her words soft and barely spoken, whispered into the small space.

He smiles up at her, a small, tired thing. “Aye.” He sighs before continuing, “Milah was my fiancée.”

Emma flinches at the word, but Killian doesn’t seem to notice, and she’s not quite sure how to explain why she had such a volatile reaction to hearing that Killian was once engaged.

“I met her about a year after graduation, after my initial acceptance and training in the Navy. She was an older woman, a much older woman really, but she was fun, adventurous, carefree. She was also very, _very_ married.”

He opens his flask again at that confession, taking a long swig before fiddling with the cap and continuing. “I knew that she was married when I first met her, and I backed off immediately upon finding out. But she was persistent, my Milah, she sought me out and after that, well, I couldn’t stay away.” He’s smiling again, but it’s still not a real smile, not a genuine one. It’s a smile of remembrance, a bittersweet smile, one that most would rather not have. Emma’s got a few.

“I proposed shortly into our courtship, knowing that she was still previously entangled with her coward of a husband, but I didn’t care. We were in love and that was all that mattered. Our happiness didn’t last long, however.” He pauses, still fiddling with the cap of his flask and not meeting her eyes. “We landed in port one weekend, and Milah and I were planning to see the sights, to enjoy ourselves. We had gone out to a bar after dinner and I’d left to get us both drinks when I turned around and she was just gone.” Killian swallows heavily, and Emma can see that his eyes are a starting to tear up.

“I thought she’d just gone to the loo, to fix her hair or wash her hands or _something._ So I just bloody waited for her to come back, and five minutes turned to ten, ten to twenty, twenty to thirty before I finally got up and went looking for her.” That’s when he finally looks up at her, his eyes definitely damp, but filled with so much anger that Emma actually flinches back, once again.

“Thirty bloody minutes, Swan, I waited thirty minutes before I went looking for her!” Killian’s fingers clench around the flask in his hand before he throws it across the room, the metal object clanging against some of the bookshelves and the rum spraying everywhere.

He’s shaking and all Emma wants to do is comfort him, but she doesn’t know how, doesn’t know if she should, so she just stands there, watching at the man before her tries to get his emotions in check, tries to bring himself back from the brink.

“I couldn’t find her anywhere in the bar.” He whispers after a few tense minutes, his chest heaving and his eyes red. “I remember it was raining that night, and I didn’t know where else to look, I was so frightened by this point, so scared about what might have happened to her, but I wasn’t expecting anything like what actually happened. Milah had always been such a tough lass, but apparently she hadn’t been as invincible as I’d always thought.”

Killian rubs his hand across his face, sighing heavily, “I went out into the side alley eventually, opening that heavy metal door and walking into the pouring rain.” He looks up at her then, catching her gaze. “You know it was raining so hard, Swan that I could barely see. If I’d put my own hand in front of my face I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to recognize it, but somehow I made out Milah’s body without any difficulty.” His shoulders are shaking again and Emma wonders briefly if he’s going to vomit, but he pushes through, resting back in his seat and closing his eyes once more.

“She was just laying there, drenched through, and you’d think that all that blood would have been washed away but I’ll never forget how red it was, how awfully red her blood was. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that. I remember shouting for help, and then I think I passed out, or maybe I’ve just blocked out those memories because the next thing I remember is sitting in a police station being interrogated by some bastard cop who was accusing me of murdering her.”

He looks up at her then, “Do you know in the movies how they play that bad cop, good cop game?” Emma nods numbly. “Well I missed out on the good cop part. All I was gifted with was some arsehole who kept shoving pictures of Milah’s naked, dead, autopsied body in my face. Asking me if I’d done this to her, if I’d killed my own fiancée. It was awful, seeing those pictures, with no rain to shroud the injuries. There were cuts and bruises all over her face and her neck. Horrible marks that proved she’d fought back, my brave Milah. But in the end she was no match for the knife that cut her heart out in that alley. That dagger that tore open her chest and ripped her heart from the cavity.”

“I remember crying and vomiting right there on that stainless steel table, just whispering her name over and over again and trying to make any sense of it.”

Emma’s as close to crying and vomiting as she’s ever been in a long time just from listening to Killian’s story, and all she wants to do is wrap him in her arms, to soothe away the pain, but she can’t do that, she can never do that.

“I ended up almost going to trial.” Killian says after some time, “Milah’s demon of a husband accused me of her murder, saying that I killed her out of jealousy. That Milah wouldn’t leave him for me and if I couldn’t have her heart then no one could. Eventually the case ended up getting thrown out due to lack of evidence.” Killian sighs loudly, no doubt trying to reign in his emotions. “And I went back into the Navy, very numb, and very, very angry.”

“Killian--” Emma starts but he cuts her off.

“Just one moment there, Swan.” He smiles up at her, “Let me get through this or I’m not sure I’ll be able to.” Emma nods in response; she understands exactly what he means.

“I went back into the Navy, and Liam was waiting for me, always waiting for me. He’d never liked the idea of me being with Milah, always thought it would end badly, all bad form and whatnot, and he had been right, but I was too bloody stubborn and too bloody angry to admit it. I lashed out at him, lashed out at everybody. Liam and I grew further and further apart, and I just kept pushing and pushing him away, so angry with the world and myself and even him, because somehow Milah’s death was everyone’s fault.”

“About a year after Milah’s murder, the ship that Liam and I served on caught fire while we were out at sea. I don’t remember everything that happened, but I’m told that my hand got caught in some rigging, and I myself had passed out. By the time that anyone could get me medical attention my hand was done for, the blood flow had been cut off for far too long.”

“When I woke up in the hospital a couple weeks later I thought I’d just lost my hand, and I bloody well threw a fit over that piece of information. Screaming and kicking and just causing a general ruckus. In fact I’ve always thought that I ought to send out a whole slew of apology notes to the good men and women who worked in that hospital. They had to deal with me realizing that I lost my hand, but the worst of all was that they had to deal with me finding out that Liam had died.”

Emma feels like she could crumple to the ground any minute now, and if her hands weren’t grasping the edges of Killian’s desk then she’s sure she wouldn’t be standing upright anymore. Her eyes are leaking tears and she’s not sure if Killian’s noticed, but her tiny sniffle makes him raise his eyes up to meet hers, and when he sees her crying he smiles up at her.

Killian takes her hand from the edge of the desk and tugs on it lightly, silently asking her to come closer. If she were in any other state of mind she would adamantly refuse, but right now she’s so numb and she’s so tired that she just goes.

He pulls her into his lap and wraps his bad arm around her while she lays her head in the space between his shoulder and his neck, closing her eyes and smelling in the scent of Killian Jones, all dark spices, rum, and ocean breeze. The familiar scent just makes her sob harder, and Killian tightens his grip on her, using his hand to run his fingers through the soft strands of her hair, whispering words of nonsense and comfort into her ear.

Killian coughs before continuing his story, still holding her tightly encased in his arms. “Apparently Liam had been thrown overboard and had drowned. I hadn’t believed the story at first, and my initial reaction wasn’t one of anger or sadness, it was just one of disbelief. I kept telling the officer that it wasn’t true, that Liam was the best swimmer I’d ever known, that he wouldn’t leave me, that he’d never leave me, that he’d never, ever left me before.” Killian takes a large breath, composing himself it would seem, before continuing.

“Once I knew that it was true I was numb, completely dead to the world. After being released from the hospital I had no idea where to go, no house to claim, so I ended up going to the last place that I was ever able to call home.”

“Here?” Emma asks, her tears beginning to dry.

She can feel Killian’s smile against the crown of her head. “Aye, lass, here. But I came back foul and angry, and rumors spread. I was the younger Jones’ brother, the one who was nearly charged with the murder of his ex-fiancée, the ex-fiancée who was already married. I was ‘little Killian’, the Jones’ brother that worked on the same ship as my older brother, the Jones’ brother that could have saved Liam if I’d ‘really tried’.” Emma gasps at the last sentence, appalled that anyone would even think such a thing.

“I was Killian Jones, the moody drunk that’d killed his fiancée and let his brother die. Even after I finally got my act together, after I opened the bar and stopped drinking so bloody much. Even after all of that the entire town still hated me, and they still do. I deserve it though, I know I do, it’s just that sometimes it’s so bloody hard.”

Emma sits up abruptly at his words, looking him hard in the eyes and grasping his face between her hands. “Killian Jones you do not deserve _any_ of those things. You didn’t deserve any of the horrible things that happened to you before you came back here and you don’t deserve any of the shit that these people give you now. People change, and if they can’t believe that then that’s their loss.”

Killian just looks at her in awe, his blue eyes wide and his mouth slightly agape, and before Emma can even think about what’s going to happen next Killian’s lips are on hers.

There’s nothing gentle about this kiss, just the rough slide of his lips against hers, and she doesn’t respond at first, is just paralyzed with surprise, but it’s only for a moment, only for a second before she’s kissing him back just a fervently.

His teeth nip at her lower lip and she squeaks a bit in surprise, which causes his lips to turn up into a smile, pressing against her’s in short, hard, desperate little kisses.

He pulls her against him more firmly, and she’s practically straddling him now, using the hands that are cupping his face to bring them further back, tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck. He gets the hint, using his own hand to pull on the strands of her own hair, tugging her head into just the right angle that he needs to deepen the kiss even more.

She’s scrambling to get closer to him and he’s desperately trying to pull her further and further into the warm heat of his body when the chair rolls back harshly into the bookshelf behind them, causing a few books that were stacked rather precariously to tumble to the ground.

The sound of the books crashing to the floor is as effective as someone dropping a bucket of ice water over her head and she practically falls out her chair in her haste to get away from him.

When she finally straightens herself up she meets his eyes and sees that he’s a wreck. His eyes blown wide and his face flushed. His lips kiss swollen and his arms still in the same position as they just were, the same position they’d been in when he’d held her and kissed her, and oh God he’d kissed her. She’d kissed him.

“I--uh, I have to go.” She doesn’t even look back, just sprints for the stairs and trips twice on her way up.

She doesn’t pause in her escape, just tumbles her way through her apartment door, locking it behind her and sliding down the rough wood until her ass meets the floor. She cradles her knees against her chest and focuses on breathing in and out.

She’d just kissed Killian Jones, and she’d liked it, and she wants to do it again, and all those things are horrible, frightening things to think, but the worst thought of all is that she knows for certain that she can never, _ever_ , do it again.


	9. You're fast asleep and you choose to be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the super long wait time between updating! I'm trying really hard to get my motivation back for this story. I will say that all of your reviews and comments helped, and it's what got me through writing this chapter. I'll try to update as frequently as possible, but I want you guys to know I won't abandon this fic! Thanks for all of your love and support, and please review if you're able :) xoxo

Emma sits on the floor of her apartment until her stomach finally gets the better of her, forcing her to get up and eat some damn food.

It’s only noon, and she’s supposed to be sleeping, catching up on all those missed hours of blissful slumber that she’d forfeited due to her night shift, but she can’t. Can’t do anything but replay every single little detail of her... _encounter_ with Killian. She is so, _so_ fucked.

Things with Killian had finally been going _right,_ but now, well now they’re all sorts of fucked up. She’s not even sure who initiated the kiss, all she remembers is staring into his eyes, waiting for him to react to the words that’d she’d just spoken, when the next thing she knew they were kissing. Lips on lips kissing, and there’s no way for her to spin that as platonic. This wasn’t a kiss on the cheek, or a gentle swipe of lips against forehead, this was an actual, earth-shattering, full force, electrified kiss. It was the kind of kiss they’d shared before, all those years ago when they were young, naive, and inexperienced. They knew better now, knew more.  They had time to learn about sexual tension and how to drive someone crazy with just the lightest brush of their lips, but this was more, this kiss was something Emma’s never experienced before. She wishes she never had.

“Fuuuck,” she groans, letting herself fall back onto her bed, a fruit rollup and a bag of Goldfish clutched in her left hand (very healthy food choices, Emma. Very healthy.) She’s not one for moping around, but today she’s giving herself this respite, letting her mind wander into places it probably shouldn’t, focusing on the way Killian’s lips felt against her own. Soft and gentle, yet hot and demanding all at the same time.

It’s in that moment, while her mind is busy cataloging the way his breath hitched and his jaw moved beneath her hand, that there’s a quiet, gentle knock on her door.

* * *

Emma bolts up immediately, some of her goldfish flying across the room and usually she’d be much more preoccupied with the unfortunate loss of such a delicious snack if it wasn’t for the knowledge that there is no one but Killian who would be knocking on her door right now. David’s working and Mary Margaret’s out of town for some kind of conference.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Emma mutters under her breath, over and over again because honestly, she’s not sure she could form words more eloquent at the moment, not when her ex-boyfriend turned landlord turned neighbor turned friend turned ex-boyfriend-landlord-neighbor-friend-that-she-just-kissed is standing outside her door.

“I can hear you cursing in there, Swan.”

_Shit. Fuck._

She doesn’t say anything, just sits back down on her bed, resting her head against the soft plush pillows and just hoping and praying that he leaves.

She hears him sigh through the door and she feels a twinge of guilt at that, but before she can examine and cross-examine that feeling he’s speaking once again.

“Listen, lass, I don’t mean to put you on the spot here, I just--” He pauses, probably taking a moment to scratch behind his ear or run his hand through his hair and Emma smiles at the thought. “I don’t want to pressure you into anything here. If you want to talk about what just happened, my door’s always open, but if you want your space and time, and would rather forget about it all, then I understand that as well.”

He’s quiet for a few moments, and Emma’s sure he must have left, said what he wanted to say before heading back down to the bar, but his voice rings out clear and quiet once more just a few moments later.

“Though I fear that I must tell you I prefer the former.”

Emma’s breath leaves her in a sharp gasp, one that she desperately hopes he doesn’t hear. He wants to talk about this? About the kiss? It was a mistake clearly, doesn’t he see that?

She doesn’t respond to him, just lays prone on her bed, her eyes wide and staring at the ceiling, waiting for him to say more or to retreat. Eventually, she hears him sigh once more before she hears the distinct sound of footsteps on stairs, and she knows that he’s heading back down to the bar. He’s still got a window to fix, and earlier Emma had thought that maybe she would have helped him, swept up the glass or made the phone call for repairs but now, well now she’s just going to lay in bed, desperately wishing that she’d never been the one to answer his call of distress in the first place. Maybe then none of this would have happened, maybe David would have dealt with this better, maybe Killian would have settled down after a few minutes alone in his office with his flask.

Instead, she’d kissed him. She answered that call, drove down to the bar, asked her questions, listened to his story, and then she’d kissed him, or he kissed her, it didn’t matter. They’d kissed, and now everything was ruined.

_Fucking night shift._

* * *

 

Emma doesn’t see Killian for two weeks after the _incident._ She’s spent the past decade learning how to avoid people she didn’t want to see and she has that shit down to an art by this point.

For three weeks she tiptoed around him, leaving her apartment either fifteen minutes earlier or later than he did. Eating all her meals on the go until she could sneak into the bar while he was working and make it up the stairs to the relative safety of her own apartment.

He started locking his door again. She heard the bolt slide into place every night, and she heard his whimpers and cries just about every night as well, letting her know that his nightmares weren’t getting any better. She never went back over, though, and not just because she knew that his door was locked, but also because she was scared of what that meant. What comforting him meant now that she’d gone and kissed him.

Instead, she just ignored him. Using her job as an escape and spending more and more time over at David and Mary Margaret’s. Helping them paint the bedroom, or reorganize the coat closet. Anything to get her away from Killian for as long as possible.

Eventually, David caught on, as brother’s do.

“Why are you avoiding Killian?” David asks while they’re eating dinner.

“David!” Mary Margaret chides at him, her spoon halfway into a bowl of broccoli.

“What?! You agreed we needed to talk to her about it!”

“Yes but maybe with a bit more tact next time!” Mary Margaret scolds, her spoon clattering against the edge of the large ceramic bowl as she glares at her husband.

“I’m not avoiding Killian,” Emma says matter of factly, looking down at her plate because while she’s always been great at knowing when others are lying to her she’s never been good at lying to others.

David scoffs and Emma’s eyes flash up to catch him staring down at his plate, patiently cutting the pork chop that rests there.

“What?” Emma asks, mouth full of bread, some crumbs falling onto the table.

“Emma you helped me reorganize my pantry this week after spending three hours watching me knit a new scarf for my stepmother.” Mary Margaret says, her eyes trained on Emma.

Emma shrugs, “Your point?”

Mary Margaret sighs, biting into a piece of broccoli before continuing. “Emma it’s obvious you’re trying to avoid Killian by spending so much time here, so we just want to know why. What happened between you two?”

“Nothing happened, and I’m not avoiding him, so can we just drop it please?”

David mutters something under his breath, and Emma glares at him across the table, her appetite suddenly lost. She hadn’t realized she was being so obvious with her avoidance of Killian, but she should have known better, Mary Margaret and David never miss a thing when it comes to her. Hell, they knew something was wrong with her last relationship before even she did (and God, does she wish she’d seen it sooner).

She decides she should probably just come clean, knowing that the two of them will just drag the truth out of her eventually, whittling away at her willpower with cookies and well-placed questions.

“I kissed him.”

A fork clatters to the table before David lets out a “You what?!”

“You kissed Killian?” Mary Margaret supplies, mouth slightly agape, and dinner long forgotten.

Emma nods, “Or he kissed me, I don’t know, it’s a little blurry, but regardless we kissed.”

“When did this happen?” Mary Margaret asks, her husband sitting silent beside her.

“A couple of weeks ago. It was after the vandalism call. David told me to go and make sure that Killian was okay,” David’s jaw clenches at the mention of his name, “and he ended up telling me the whole story of his past after we all left high school.” Emma shrugs, “I guess emotions were running high and we just, well, we _kissed_.”

“And how do you feel about it?” Mary Margaret asks, putting on her teacher slash therapist hat, hands folded demurely in front of her.

“Like shit.”

David frowns and Mary Margaret tilts her head to the left, one eyebrow raised.

Emma realizes how that must sound and rushes to explain, “I mean, not like about myself, just I don’t know, I can’t do it again. I can’t be with Killian again because the last time he broke me and I can’t let him break me like that again.” She can tell that both her brother and sister-in-law are about to say something, reassure her or ask her another question and she just can’t deal with the third-degree tonight. “And I’ll always have feelings for him, of course, I will, but being around him now just makes me more confused about all of this, and I just, I don’t know what to do anymore.”

A silence follows her confession and it’s long enough to get her fidgeting in her seat, second guessing everything she just said and wishing for the life of her that she could just learn to keep her mouth shut about all of this personal shit, but she doesn’t get far down that road of self-loathing before Mary Margaret pipes up again.

“You should talk to him.”

“ _What?_ ” David and Emma say at the same time, both turning wide eyes towards the other woman.

“You need to talk to him about this or you’ll never get past it, Emma! You can’t live in an apartment building and avoid your landlord and next door neighbor for very long. Actually, I’m surprised you’ve even been able to for this long, which makes it pretty clear that Killian is trying very hard to give you your space when it comes to this matter.”

“I can’t talk to him about this Mary Margaret.”

“She’s right M,” David says, turning to his wife, before refocusing his gaze on Emma. “You can just move out Emma, come stay with us, you can take the loft.”

“David!” Mary Margaret exclaims, glaring at her husband.

“What?! You can’t honestly expect her to live in that building with him? Where he practically accosted her!”

“He didn’t _accost_ me, David, and also when did you start using vocabulary from the 1800’s?”

David rolls his eyes, “Listen, Emma, all I’m saying is you don’t have to live there, you don’t have to deal with this, you deserve better, you deserve to live somewhere you feel safe and happy at.”

Her brother continues to ramble, but Emma’s too busy thinking about the words “safe” and “happy” to listen to him any longer.

Didn’t she always feel that way with Killian? When they were younger she definitely did. She always felt safe when she was with him, always felt truly free to be herself. And she absolutely felt happy, pure unadulterated happiness. If she’s being honest with herself she felt safe and happy even before, even three weeks ago when they had a routine and they were friends. She felt safe in her apartment, in his apartment, in the bar. She felt safe talking to him and being around him. She felt happy whenever she saw him smile, or made him laugh, and she just wishes desperately that she could get back to that, back to their friendship, squash her feelings down, whatever they may be, and focus on maintaining something as close to normal as possible with Killian Jones.

“I’ll talk to him.”

Mary Margaret squeals in delight at Emma’s sudden decision, and David just looks at her, jaw slackened and surprise lingering in his eyes.

They don’t talk about Killian for the rest of the night, Emma waving off any more of their questions or suggestions, instead focusing on finishing dinner, helping to clean up, and spending another hour or so drinking coffee and talking to her brother and sister-in-law about all the baby names they have picked out for when they finally conceive.

She drives home with a sense of calm, knowing full well that talking to Killian is the right decision, but just not knowing how she’s going to find the courage to actually do it.

* * *

 

She doesn’t have to wait very long.

She’s not come home this early in a long time, and she should have realized that leaving Mary Margaret and David’s apartment before 10 p.m. on a Friday would mean getting back to the Jolly Roger during peak hours.

After the incident with the window, the flow of customers to the bar had increased, if only slightly. Seems like no one in this small town can deny themselves from gravitating toward the center of any drama.

Killian’s usual patronage of about fifteen per night had increased to about thirty or so, and so it’s been harder and harder for Emma to sneak past him on her way to the back stairs. Usually, on a slow, or even a regular night, Killian would be in the back, reorganizing stock or dealing with finances instead of constantly manning the bar, but now, with the double increase of patrons he’s practically always behind the massive oak counter, taking drinks and punching in orders.

Coming in between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m. (especially on the weekend) was her practically begging to get sighted by him, and it was only 9:48.

She stared at the clock on her dashboard for five minutes before heaving a sigh, grabbing her purse and coat from the passenger seat and trudging her way into the bar.

The moment she steps into the threshold of the building she’s assaulted by the hot smell of liquor and sweat. The bar is _packed_. Practically overflowing with patrons and Emma’s not sure where to look first, but she quickly gauges that Killian is in over his head. He doesn’t have a second bartender on staff. He told her once that he hires one or two of the older college kids during summer to help with the rush but it’s November, and she knows he’s got no one but himself.

Emma pushes her way through the crowd, feeling bad about how she’s just going to make a beeline for the stairs when she hears her name being called (being called in a frighteningly familiar accent).

_Fuck._

“Swan, could you lend a bloke a hand please?”

Emma’s gaze shifts to the bar before she spots Killian. He’s standing at the tap pouring a beer and there're at least a dozen customers waiting for an order to be filled.

She sighs, making her way toward him, and silently cursing herself for leaving Mary Margaret and David’s so early.

“I don’t know how to bartend, Killian.” She says before he can even get a word in, peeling off her leather jacket and setting it on a stool behind the bar.

He flashes her a quick grin as he transports the freshly poured beers to a line of clearly just turned twenty-one frat boys.

“I just need help handling the money and maybe pouring a few beers. I can handle the rest.” He’s wiping down the counter vigorously, no doubt trying to put off getting another order from the long line of waiting customers until he gets her answer.

“Why is it so busy, anyway?” She asks in lieu of an answer.

“Some kind of bloody debate tournament in the next town over? I don’t bloody know, all I know is that there’s a huge flux of college aged kids coming to me for all of their alcohol based needs, and I’m standing on one leg here.”

Emma sighs, before muttering a “Fine.” in reply, surprising even herself. Killian lets out a whooping cheer, and the smile on his face, full teeth, and lips stretch skyward, has her insides melting and her heart beating erratically.

* * *

 

She is _so, so_ fucked.

The rest of the night goes by in a blur, and she’s lost track of a number of beers she’s poured, and most of all she’s lost track of a number of times she’s caught Killian staring at her.

Whenever she catches his eyes on her he looks away quickly, and usually if she’d catch a guy ogling her while she’s trying to work she wouldn’t hesitate to give him a piece of her mind (and maybe a piece of her fist) but Killian’s not looking at her in a leering or lecherous way, he’s looking at her in awe, with a small smile ever present on his lips.

His lips. She’s thinking about them constantly. Thinking about the way they felt against her own and the way they moved. She’s thinking about every kissed they’ve ever shared (and there’s been _many_ ).

She’s so angry at herself. So angry that she’d let Killian kiss her or that she’d kissed Killian, or however it happened, she’s just angry that it happened, because now her long dormant, always tingling under the surface feelings for him have been brought back into the light. Now she’s thinking about the way he smiles and he way he speaks, about how her name sounds when it leaves his lips. She’s thinking about the hair on his chest and the way he looked at her during their previous intimate moments. She’s thinking about it all, and that’s not what she wants. She needs to remember that he broke her and that nothing is worth experiencing that pain again, no matter how much his smile makes her stomach turn or how much she wants to kiss him again.

She’ll always love Killian. She just wishes she wouldn’t.

* * *

 

Around two in the morning the chaos finally tapers off, and Killian’s yelling out for last calls as the drunk and disorderly file out the door (she made sure everyone had a DD because honestly, she is the deputy).

When it hits 2:30 the bar is blessedly empty, and all Emma wants to do is take a quick shower and fall into bed, but she feels bad leaving Killian with this huge mess to clean up, even if it’s not really her job.

“You don’t have to stay to help, Swan, I’ve got it covered.” He smiles at her, almost shyly, as he picks up an overturned chair.

“It’s no problem,” she says, shrugging him off. She starts to go around and collect empty bottles of beer, throwing them into the already full trashcans. The bottles clang loudly together and she sees Killian flinch at the sound.

“Sorry.”

He looks over at her, shocked. “Nothing to apologize for, lass. Afraid I haven’t been very good with loud noises since my time on duty.”

“That must be hard.” She says in way of response, and she immediately berates herself. _That must be hard?_ What kind of response is that?

“Aye, though I’ve gotten much better since my original diagnosis. Therapy groups, weekly one-on-one sessions and the like.”

She doesn’t respond for a few minutes, leaving the trash bag and going to pick up fallen napkins and misplaced beer caps. She thought he might have PTSD, what with all his constant nightmares and his insomnia, but it’s a different beast to think about when she gets the confirmation.

“Sorry, Swan. Didn’t mean to get all personal on you there.” He’s got a hint of self-loathing to his voice and Emma feels struck by the vulnerability in this man. He puts on such a bravado front, but when he really opens up he’s just as broken as her.

“I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.” She says quickly, wondering if she’ll regret revealing this part of herself once she see’s his reaction, but what she gets is a look of respect and understanding from Killian, not one of judgment or pity.

“I used to be scared of talking about it, like acknowledging my disorder somehow made it more real. I remember getting diagnosed and thinking ‘well, look at me, just one step further toward being completely and irreversibly fucked up.’” Killian smiles at that, his blue eyes earnestly gazing into her own and usually in this type of encounter she’d feel like she was being put on a stage, with one giant halo of spotlight shining down on her. She’d feel like an act, like a puppet in a show, but right now she just feels _heard_.

“Then I realized it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” she shrugs, “I’m not any lesser of a person because of this, and I don’t mind talking about it anymore, to some extent at least.”

She didn’t realize that both she and Killian had slowly been making their way closer to one another, but by the time she’s finished telling her tale he’s standing right in front of her, bar rag slung loosely over his shoulder.

“You’re bloody brilliant, Emma Swan.”

Emma’s cheeks flush red and her whole body feels hot, and as with every ounce of praise she receives, she tries to direct the attention off herself.

“I’m no survivor of PTSD or anything, it’s just a general anxiety disorder and--” Killian cuts her off, hand and prosthetic placed firmly on her shoulders, and her eyes meet his, wide and panicked, and he looks angry, practically livid.

“Don’t _ever_ sell yourself short like that, Emma. We both had different journeys, that doesn’t mean yours is any less important than my own.”

She can feel her eyes welling up a bit at the earnest tone in his voice and no one has ever told her those things before. No one has ever really stood in front of her and forced her to listen while they praised her, and spouted her name like it’s something incredible, like it’s something meaningful. She’s had love in her life, sure, with David, and Mary Margaret, and Ruth, but she’s never had this, never had someone who understands her so fully.

(She did. She had him. Once.)

She wants to kiss him. She wants to kiss him more than she’s wanted anything, but she can’t.

She leans forward a bit anyway, out of instinct and want rather than conscious decision. His lips are just millimeters away from her own, and she can feel his breath against her cheek, can feel his nose against her own, and both of them are breathing heavy like they’ve already gotten to the kissing portion of this ordeal.

“Emma,” he whispers, and there’s warning in his voice, and she feels like a fool.

She’s backed away from him quicker than she thought possible, across the room, hands braced against the bar, eyes wide and staring at him.

“I’m sorry,” she says, all hot breath and barely any words. “I--I’m going to go now.” She makes a beeline for the stairs, her face red and she feels like she could cry, like she could break down right here. She’s never felt so idiotic. He doesn’t want her, he didn’t want to kiss her. Now he knows how truly broken she really is and he wants nothing to do with it. All the pretty words he’d just said fly from her mind and the only thing she can remember is the way he said her name like he didn’t want to hurt her feelings with his rejection.

He catches her by the arm before she can reach the stairs, pulling her toward him, her chest hitting his own.

“I want you, Emma.” He’s breathless, and so is she, pressed up against him like this. It brings back memories, the kind that makes her blush. “I want you so bloody much I can’t think half the time. I want to kiss you more than I’ve wanted bloody anything, so please don’t misunderstand my reluctance as repugnance.”

“What--”

He kisses her then, softly, and it’s over before she can react, just a brush of his lips against her own.

“I want you, but I need you to want me too. I need you to not just want me right now when I’m saying pretty words to you. I need you to want me without regret and anger and resentment clouding your heart. I need to explain things to you about our past, and I need you to forgive me before we take this any further.”

She can’t speak, so shocked by the way he can read her so easily.

_Bastard._

“So if we just need to be friends for a while, if you just need a bit of distance from me that’s fine, I’ll give you anything you want, but you need to know that I do want you, Emma Swan. I’ve always wanted you, and I’ll never stop wanting you.”

It’s too much, this speech. She needs to get away, she needs to go and shower and think about everything that’s just happened.

She needs to be away from him.

He releases her before she gets the chance to say any of this, and she knows that he’s letting her go, letting her leave, he’s not holding her here under an obligation to reply.

So she leaves, trudges up the stairs, and doesn’t say another word to him.

He says a few more, though, his soft voice drifting up to her as she makes her way to her apartment.

“Goodnight, Emma.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hello on tumblr! georgianablythe16 :)


	10. I loved you then, I still do now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a little Christmas for your September Saturday night :) Review if you can :)

_She’s never had a boyfriend before. Always the ugly duckling and the odd one out. Always the orphan without a friend, let alone the kind of friend that actually wants to, like, kiss her and spend time with her and take her on dates._

_Killian’s the best at coming up with dates that don’t cost a lot of money because neither of them has any in the first place. He takes her stargazing, cooks her dinner at his and his brother’s apartment (Liam’s always a good sport about it, ruffling his little brother’s hair and going in the other room to watch soccer; or football, as they always remind her), he’s picks her flowers from the Widow Lucas’s garden (with her_ express _permission, mind you). But most of all he spends time with her. Listens to her. Makes her laugh._

_He makes her happy. Beyond happy._

_When Christmas comes around they’ve officially been dating for almost two months, and it doesn’t seem like a long time, and it isn’t, but to them it feels like an eternity, like there was never a point in their lives where they didn’t know each other, where they didn’t love one another._

_Love. She hasn’t told him yet, that she thinks she might love him. That she thinks he’s_ it _for her. Her one and only true love. She never believed in that type of thing before, never believed in her own happy ending, but with Killian, it doesn’t seem miles away anymore, it seems like it’s here._

_She’s happy. And he’s a very large part of why._

_“What are you doing for Christmas?” He asks her on their last walk home from school before winter break. He’s got her gloved hand tightly wound with his, idly rubbing his thumb along her own._

_Emma shrugs, “Ruth’s cooking some big Christmas brunch and then Mary Margaret is coming over later in the evening to bake cookies and exchange gifts with David.”_

_“So you’re free for dinner then, aye?” He nudges her with his shoulder, a wide grin on his face and Emma smiles back, free and happy._

_“What do you have planned, Jones?”_

_“Liam has to work Christmas evening, says that the docking yard needs a set of eyes to watch over it all, make sure nothing goes awry, and no ones around trying to cause any type of disturbance or foul play. I thought maybe you could come over and I could make you dinner? Watch a movie?”_

_“That sounds like it could be arranged.”_

_He laughs heartily, disconnecting their hands and flinging one arm around her shoulder, pulling her closer to his side, the rough slide of wool against wool sending a shiver down her spine. She catches his hand where it rests on her shoulder, bringing the back of it to her mouth and kissing it lightly. He beams down at her, before tugging her even closer, and pressing a gentle kiss to her temple._

_There’s snow falling and it’s well below freezing. Her socks are wet and her nose is a vibrant red. Her ears are numb and there's’ a burning in her legs from all the exertion, but when she looks at his face, with snowflakes collecting in his thick eyelashes, framing his blue, blue eyes, she’s never felt warmer._

* * *

 

 

_When Christmas Eve arrives Killian calls her right before she falls asleep, letting her know exactly what time to come over tomorrow, and promising her that she won’t regret it. (She already knows she won’t)_

_“Merry Christmas, Emma.” He whispers right before hanging up, and she swears it’s like he’s here, his breath warm on her ear._

_“Merry Christmas, Killian.” It’s breathy and quiet, barely audible._

_It sounds a lot like ‘I love you,”._

* * *

 

 

_She arrives at Killian’s around eight in the evening, and it’s been snowing non-stop for hours. The roads are covered in snow and she almost fell twice on her way over, slipping and sliding along the narrow sidewalks._

_She’s wearing snow boots but she brought a bag with a nicer pair of gold flats in them. She picked her outfit tonight to be particularly festive, with a bright red skirt (a big bow cinching at the waist because Mary Margaret helped her pick it out) and a long-sleeved, white lace shirt. Her hair is curled in big, loose waves, and she kept her makeup light but did put on a shine of red lip gloss. Killian told her once that red was his favorite color, so she’s hoping that she’s able to pull it off._

_When she gets to the house Killian opens the door before she can even knock, and the warmth from the foyer floods out onto the porch, brightening her face and warming her heart all at once._

_She can faintly hear some Christmas music in the background, but she can’t make it out and frankly she doesn’t want to as Killian picks her up in his arms, spinning her around before setting her back down, capturing her lips with his own. He pulls back quickly, much to Emma’s dismay, and her feelings on the ending of the kiss must be obvious because he chuckles at her, before sweetly kissing her forehead, and ushering her through the door._

_“You look stunning, love.” He whispers in her ear, and she feels herself blush as red as the skirt she’s wearing._

_“Thank you,” She whispers, not quite meeting his eyes, still so unused to being complimented so often._

_The house smells delicious, and Emma’s mouth starts to water instantly. She thought she was still full from Ruth’s_ massive _brunch, but apparently not._

_“What are you cooking, master chef?”_

_He smirks at her, winking before turning back around and leading her toward the kitchen. “It’s a surprise my dear Swan.”_

_Her heart stutters (as it always does) at the possessive way in which he says her name. My Swan. My dearest Emma. My darling. All of them make her heart swoop and her mind scream at her to just tell him. Tell him that she loves him._

_She plops herself down on a stool in the kitchen, watching as Killian goes to check something in the oven. That’s when she notices that he’s wearing an apron. An apron with lots, and lots of candy canes on it._

_She starts laughing before she can stop herself because her big, strong, flirty Killian Jones is wearing an apron with candy canes and...little rudolphs on it._

_He turns towards her with a look of confusion on his face but he catches on quickly._

_“Oi! It’s not wise to laugh at a man who’s cooking you dinner, darling.”_

_But now she’s bent over, tears leaking from her eyes, only because he looks so perfectly affronted by her laughter._

_“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she gets out in between large, laboring breaths. “I was just caught off guard is all.”_

_He scoffs, a look of mock anger on his face, before turning back around to close the oven, and now she’s worried that he might actually be angry at her, that it’s not mock anger at all, but very, very real anger. Her laughing stops abruptly, and she’s berating herself viciously because she ruins everything. This is why no one ever wanted her because she’s such a total, and complete fuck up._

_He turns around at her silence eventually, and she can’t stop the tears that are leaking from her eyes, because_ dammit  _she’s ruined Christmas._

_“Hey, hey, hey, what’s going on?” He asks, his voice soft but laced with worry, and he makes his way around the small island in the kitchen, coming to stand in front of where she sits on the stool, and his arms go around her immediately, and he’s still got oven mitts on, and she’s ruining everything._

_She tries to push him away, but he just holds on tighter, cradling her head against his chest and flinging one of his oven mitts onto the counter so that he can card his fingers through her hair._

_“Shh, it’s alright love, it’s alright.” His comforting words and lilting voice just have her sobbing, her whole body shaking and this is so stupid, she thinks. He’s holding you! He’s not angry! But her stupid, petty mind can’t wrap itself around that thought, instead, the mantra of ‘not good enough, stupid, stupid, stupid’ is just repeating over and over again in her head._

_“Darling, what’s wrong?” He sounds a bit panicked now like he doesn’t know what to do and he’s still running his hand through her hair, his other arm wrapped tightly around her._

_“I’m sorry,” she finally gets out, in between hiccups and sniffles. Killian grabs a tissue from a table in the corner, using it to gently dab around her eyes before handing it to her, letting her blow her nose while he rubs her back gently._

_“What are you sorry for, lass? You’ve done nothing wrong.”_

_“I laughed at your apron, and you’re probably mad at me, and I wasn’t trying to make fun of you, it was just a funny image because you’re so cocky and flirty and,” He chuckles at that, but otherwise stays silent, letting her continue, “and I don’t think it’s weird that you’re wearing it, because you’re being so kind and you’re cooking me dinner and you look very handsome wearing it! But I didn’t mean to make you angry and I thought I’d ruined the night and then I couldn’t stop crying and I_ actually _did ruin the night and I’m just a mess.” Her eyes started leaking again before she could get all the way through the explanation, and he’s kissing her forehead gently while she silently cries._

_“You think I look handsome?” He says, laughter in his voice and she hiccups a laugh around her tears, hitting him on the chest for being so incorrigible._

_“Emma I wasn’t mad at you, I was just teasing, darling.” He lifts her chin up with his finger and looks down at her with his eyes bright and blue. “You could never ruin Christmas. My Christmas is perfect with you just being here.”_

_She smiles up weakly at him, and he returns it with one of his own, a smile soft and gentle, full lips and dimples flashing._

_He leans down to kiss her softly, his lips sliding against her own, and she feels light and whole and happy._

_“I’m sorry,” she mutters once more when they separate, but he shushes her immediately._

_“Nothing to apologize for, my love.” He turns around after kissing her on the forehead, checking the oven again, and so he doesn’t catch the way she stiffens when he calls her his love._

_Maybe she heard him wrong. Maybe he never said the “my” part, because he’s called her love multiple times but he’s never called her_ his _love._

_She doesn’t have much more time to reflect on it though because before she knows it Killian is ushering her into the dining room, which is really just a tiny alcove off the kitchen, with a table big enough for maybe three people. She’s seen the space before, has eaten dinner with both him and Liam there, but she gasps when she sees it this time._

_The table is covered with a white cloth, and there're candles lit in the center, the lights flickering off of them and casting a glow onto both of their faces. He’s set the table properly, with two salad plates, dinner plates, silverware, and even cloth napkins. She’s not sure how he did all of this, but she turns toward him and he’s smiling at her shyly, scratching behind his ear._

_“It’s some of my mother’s things. We tried to save all that we could, and well, these were the plates and napkins that she used when we had Christmas dinner back home.” He shrugs like it’s not a big deal when it really, absolutely is._

_“I love it.” She says, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tight, trying not to cry again over how absolutely sweet and amazing this silly, wonderful, loving, beautiful boy is. “Thank you.”_

_He’s beaming at her when he pulls away to go and get the food. “Anything for my Swan.” He kisses her cheek swiftly, hurrying back into the kitchen and leaving her to stand and stare at all that he’s done for her. She’s wringing her hands tightly because she has to tell him, she’s not sure she can hold it in any longer. She loves him. She loves Killian Jones. Loves him so much she might burst if she doesn’t tell him._

_He comes back seconds later, carrying out a bowl of salad that he sets down on the table before pulling her chair back for her, pushing it in and kissing her shoulder once he’s done. She shivers at the contact, and he’s got a smirk on his face as he serves the salad._

* * *

 

_They eat dinner slowly, Emma telling him about her morning and the very large brunch that Ruth made. Telling him about how much David freaked out over getting a gift for Mary Margaret, and how he ended up just hand making and painting her an ornament that said “Our first Christmas”, and how Mary Margaret cried for a solid twenty minutes after he gave it to her._

_Killian laughs along with her, holding her hand across the table from time to time. The dinner is fantastic. Killian used one of his mother’s old recipes for pork loin, stuffed with blue cheese and pears and rosemary, and he made mashed potatoes and asparagus, tying it all together with a homemade apple cake. (extra cinnamon)._

 

_After dinner, he asks her if she wants to watch a movie, to which she quickly agrees, but wishes that she’d brought more comfortable clothes. Killian notices her hesitation, because of course he does, and offers her a pair of his pajama pants and a sweatshirt, and that’s how she ends up laying down on Killian’s bed, wearing red flannel pajama bottoms, a large gray sweatshirt, and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” with two mugs of hot chocolate and cinnamon resting on the nightstand._

_Killian strung Christmas lights on his back wall, and every time she looks up from where they’re lying she sees a multi-colored world of blues and reds and greens and pinks, and she smiles so that her teeth can be a rainbow too._

_He’s got her hand clasped in his own and he’s rubbing nonsense patterns on her skin, when she just turns to him, during the prom scene, and lays it all out on the line._

_“I love you.” She whispers, eyes watching as his widen before turning toward her. He sits up almost immediately, before hovering over her, hands planted on opposite sides of her head._

_“You mean that?” he asks, and she can barely hear him over the sound of “Lasso the Moon”, but she nods anyway, biting her lip and trying not to grin at the look on his face._

_“Oh, Emma,” He says, before leaning down to brush his lips against her own, “I love you.”_

_He kisses her again and again and again, and things get heated quickly until his fingers are inching under her (his) sweater and she can feel her breaths getting shallower because god does she want this._

_He looks at her imploringly, asking permission and she acquiesces, nodding her head swiftly before helping him take the sweatshirt off, leaving her in nothing but her bra, soft cotton and patterned in snowflakes. He chuckles at that, tracing the edges of the material, making her shiver._

_“Seems I’m not the only one with a fondness for seasonal patterns.”_

_“Shut up,” She says, before reaching behind her and unsnapping the clasp, pulling the fabric away from her chest and letting it drop to the floor. That does, in fact, shut him up._

_He reaches for her breast and he’s being so, so gentle, cupping both of them in his hands before leaning back down to kiss her._

_In no time they’re both devoid of clothing, fumbling around one another and trying to make everything go perfectly. They struggle with the condom for what feels like hours but eventually they figure it out and they can’t stop touching one another._

_When they finally come together Emma’s looking up at the lights on the ceiling, wondering if seeing stars is really such a cliché after all._

* * *

  _After, when the t.v.’s muted and the lights are off (albeit the Christmas ones, still shining brightly on the ceiling), and their tangled together, skin against skin, his arm around her and his lips muttering a string of ‘I love you’s’ into her neck, she can faintly hear the music from downstairs that he forgot to shut off. And as the lines of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” drift up the stairs towards them, Frank Sinatra’s voice crooning on and on, she thinks that maybe yeah, there’s merit to this song, to this holiday, because even though she has to get up and go home soon, get up and leave Killian,  she feels, for once,  like all her troubles are truly miles (and miles) away._

* * *

It’s been a month since the night in the bar. It’s been a month since Killian told her that he wants her. It’s been a month, and nothing’s really changed. She thought he might come to her and do as he promised, explain to her why he left her all those years ago in the first place, but it’s been complete radio silence from his end unless she initiates it first (which she rarely does).

She sees him on her way out the door, sees him on her way in, sometimes catches him on her lunch break as she comes home for a quick snack, muttering ‘hello’s’ and ‘how are you?’s’ but other than that, nothing.

The one instance she can remember where the spoke more than a few words to one another was Thanksgiving day as she left to go over to Mary Margaret and David’s. She’d seen him in the hallway, just entering his apartment.

“Hey.” She’d said, surprising him as he turned around, one large brown bag clutched against his chest, cradled in his arm. “What are your plans for the holiday?”

He’d chuckled at that, “‘Fraid I don’t have plans, good ol’ Brit that I am.”

“Ah, I forgot,” she’d said, a smile on her face as she had absentmindedly jangled her keys in her hands. “You poor English men don’t get to celebrate the glorious holiday of Thanksgiving. You’re all missing out, seriously.”

He’d laugh at that that, a big, real, laugh. “Aye, can’t ruin the holiday for you Yanks, so we’ll just let you have your fun.”

“Well, Happy Thursday then!” She had called as she made her way down the first few steps.

She had vaguely heard him call back to her, something akin to “And the happiest of Thanksgivings to you, Swan.” before she’d heard his apartment door open and shut.

Her Thanksgiving was okay.

* * *

A week before Christmas she gets a call from David, letting her know that he and Mary Margaret had a late change of Christmas plans and that they now had to drive up to New York to spend Christmas with Mary Margaret’s step-mother and her new fiance.

“You guys are seriously abandoning me for Christmas?” There isn’t much fire behind her words, more like a joking lilt, but her heart plummets at the thought of being alone on the holiday.

“You can always come with, Emma, but it’s going to be rather boring and it’s a really long drive.”

Emma hates car rides, especially if she isn’t driving, she always gets sick when the drive is more than an hour long.

“I guess this means I’ll be working the Christmas shift?”

“Just the day shift, you can just keep your cell phone on at night, just in case, though you probably won’t need it, nothing happen on Christmas, only Christmas Eve.”

“I have the Christmas Eve shift too, right?”

“Please?” David begs, trying to convey his puppy dog face through the telephone, and of course, Emma will work the shift, she just loves giving her brother a hard time.

“Yeah, yeah, have fun in NY.”

“You’re the best, Emma, seriously.”

“I know, I know.” she waves off his compliments, even if he can’t see her physically doing so.

Emma hangs up the phone with both a sense of relief and a sense of disappointment. She hasn’t been a fan of Christmas for a very, very long time, so not having to fake happiness around her brother and sister-in-law is partially a godsend, but being alone, well that never feels great, no matter her feelings for the holiday.

She sighs, going back to watching her movie, begging and praying and hoping that this holiday season goes by quickly.

* * *

On Christmas, Eve Emma spends the entire day out answering calls. Someone crashed their truck into a mailbox, someone had a wreath stolen, someone else stole someone’s wreath. It was a disaster day, one of the worst Christmas Eve’s she’d ever worked. She gets home around one in the morning on Christmas day, settling down in her bed for a five-hour nap before getting up once more to start another holiday shift.

By noon on Christmas day, she’s bored out of her mind, flipping through her fifth  _Better Homes_  magazine, scoffing at the ridiculous decorations that some people put in their houses. She’s still got nine hours to go and she feels like she might be going insane.

* * *

When 12:30 rolls around she’s literally damning David to hell when there’s a knock on her office door.

“Deputy,” comes the lilting accent of Killian Jones, all dressed in leather and boots, looking at her with an amused grin on his face. “Bad form to damn your coworkers, and family members, to the eternal suffering I would say, and on Christmas no less.”

Emma sits up straight from her slouched position, trying not to look like such a complete slob. “Yeah, well, he should think about that before sticking me with both holiday shifts. What’s that?” She points at the bag that Killian’s holding in his right hand.

“Ah,  _this_ ,” he proclaims, loud and boisterous like he’s announcing some grand entree at a fancy restaurant rather than a brown sack of most likely greasy and unhealthy food. “Is some homemade lunch choices for Storybrooke’s finest and most dedicated officer of the law.”

He sets the bag down on her desk, smirking down on the stack of eight  _Better Home_ magazines, “We have, grilled cheese,” before he can finish she’s reaching for the tin-foil wrapped square, dying for some bread and cheese, but he pulls it out of her reach, ‘Ah, ah, ah, Swan, patience. Let me explain the damn dish before you grab at it.”

“Fine,” Emma mutters under her breath, looking at him with pouting eyes, to which he just chuckles at before getting back to his one-man, theatrical lunch show.

“Grilled cheese, made with brioche, cheddar cheese, a hint of provolone, and the finest turkey that you can get on short notice from the deli.” Her mouth is practically watering at the prospect of eating that delicious sandwich, but Killian just sets in back in the bag before continuing. “A bag of potato chips from aisle number 7 in our very own local grocery, and...drum roll please, Swan.”

Emma sighs dramatically, annoyed that she’s not eating the food yet, before lightly tapping her fingers down on her desk, creating the drum roll he so specifically asked for.

“Home baked, with love and holiday spirit, your favorite, chocolate chip and toffee cookies.”

Emma literally squeals at that, jumping up from her seat and grabbing the package of what looks to be half a dozen cookies from Killian’s grip.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” she says through a mouthful of cookie.

“You’re welcome, love,” Killian says through his laughter, but the moment he sees her flinch at his word choice his smile and his laughter disappears in record time like it’s very own Christmas miracle.

“Sorry.” She says before she can stop herself, because that apology is not sincere in any way. She’s not sorry for how his flippant use of the word bothers her, because it’s not her fault that it does, it’s his.

“Not a problem, Swan.” He says through clenched teeth, and she rolls her eyes at his words because he shouldn’t be angry at her, he has no right to be angry at her.

“You can’t honestly be mad at me for that? Like it’s somehow my fault that you ruined me for any type of love?” She knows that’s not true, that there’s been a long string of people that have ruined her for love. All those families that gave her up, Neal, Graham, Walsh, all of them ruined her, but Killian did too, he was just one of the first.

He breathes in sharply through his nose at her accusation. His jaw clenched and eyes brimming with fury. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” He turns to go, but Emma’s not going to be left feeling like shit like it’s her fault somehow that now the day is ruined.

“You’re honestly mad at me right now? If you should be mad at anyone it should be you!” She yells at him as he takes two steps down the hallway, but at her words, he turns quickly toward her again.

“I bloody well am angry with myself Emma! I’ve been furious with myself for over a decade now!” His voice has raised considerably and she’s half afraid that the station's next door neighbors, Storybrooke’s loan servicer, is going to file a complaint but then she remembers it’s Christmas day and no one’s around, all the other stores and shops are empty.

“Angry with yourself because now you can’t fix things with me so easily? Can’t rope me back in with your pretty words? Angry with yourself because I’m not falling for it anymore?” Lies, lies, lies, she’s still down on the ground, she’s been fallen since her senior year and there’s no coming back up. She loves Killian, she always has, and always will, but she’s just so angry that he ended that, and she can’t stop the words from coming, from spewing out of her mouth like vomit.

“Angry with myself because I bloody well let the woman I love go, and I can’t fix it! Because she’ll never trust me again, and I gave up the best thing in my life in exchange for--” He stops then, breathing heavy, chest heaving before his face falls, and his eyes start to water. She feels like crying too, might do it actually, but he continues then, stopping any of her thoughts from coming to fruition, “Merry Christmas, Emma.” He turns then, walks down the hallway and leaves, and she can hear the door slam just as she falls back into her chair, cradling her face in her hands and trying desperately not to cry.

It takes her twenty minutes or so to get her act together, pushing her fight with Killian to the back of her mind. She wishes she hadn’t started it, but she’s so angry at him. He said he wanted her, but he hasn’t made an effort to prove that until now.

She’s not sure if she should eat the food he’s made, but her stomach gets the better of her and she reaches for the bag that’s sitting on the edge of her desk.

She reaches inside for the sandwich and the chips, but her fingers brush to paper. She looks down into the bag, grabbing a piece of lined notebook paper, with her name written elegantly on the outside of it, all looping letters and dark ink.

She feels anger sweeping over her, that he’s writing her letters now like they’re together or like he has a right to. She opens the paper quickly, not really caring about what’s inside (or at least telling herself that).

 

_Emma,_

_Merry Christmas, darling. I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit distant this past month but it seems like you needed your space. I wanted to give that to you. But now I think that maybe that wasn’t the best course of action. I’d like to spend more time with you lass like to be your friend again, like to be worthy of you again. So I’ll shorten that distance for you, and I’m hoping you’ll do that same. I’d do anything for you Emma, hell, I’d lasso the moon for you._

 

_Merry Christmas, Swan,_

_Killian_

 

Emma can feel tears in her eyes immediately, and she clutches the notes to her chest as they fall. She wishes, wishes desperately that things could be different. That he’d never left her, that they could have spent years growing together rather than apart, because she loves him, more than he’ll ever know, but she’s so, so scared. And if she heard correctly he just told her he loves her too, not loved, but loves her.

_The woman I love._

She finishes her lunch with one hand, note crushed tightly in the other, she’s not letting it go.

* * *

By nine she’s off, and she’s heading back to the bar.

The lights are off when she gets there, but she’s able to slip inside easily, locking the door behind her and making her way up the steps.

There’s no light coming out from underneath Killian’s door so she just heads to her own, collapsing back on her bed and falling asleep to the sound of her refrigerator humming.

No Frank Sinatra this year.

* * *

She wakes up to the sound of Killian crying, whimpering in his sleep. She bolts upright and her heart breaks as she looks at the clock and realizes it’s only 11:00, still Christmas, and she’s only been asleep for about an hour.

Emma thinks she might ignore it, that maybe he’ll wake up and he’ll be okay, but as the minutes tick by he’s still thrashing about and she makes the decision to get up and go over there.

His door is unlocked, and as she pads her way into his apartment a small gasp escapes her. There are Christmas lights everywhere. Strung from the ceiling and hanging from the mantle. Brightly colored orbs decorating his apartment.

He’s bathed in rainbow as she makes her way over to his bed, watching as he continues to whimper, and he’s clutching his stump to his chest, like it’s in pain, like he’s in pain.

“Killian,” she whispers, but it doesn’t wake him and she knows she’s going to have to actually touch him to wake him up. “Killian, please wake up.” She shakes his shoulder gently and he wakes with a start, nearly knocking her off the bed.

“Emma?” he asks, catching sight of her and she nods in response, to which he sighs heavily. “I’m sorry for waking you again, bloody hell, I’m sorry.” He runs his hand through his hair aggressively.

“Hey, it’s okay.” She says, laying a hand on his forearm. He looks down on her hand on his skin and she suppresses a shiver at the way he’s looking at her like he wants nothing more than to hold her drag her back into his bed.

She wants that too.

“I’m sorry about earlier, Swan, I shouldn’t have said any of that, I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that and--”

“Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?” He asks, confusion evident on his face, brow furrowed.

“The part where you said I’m the woman you love, present-tense.” She looks down, not able to meet his eyes.

“Oh Swan,” He tips her chin up, making her look at him and his eyes are sincere, his voice steady, “I’ve loved you since the day I met you. Since before I even knew your name.”

She lets out a sigh that sounds just like a sob and then she’s leaning in, touching her lips to his.

He sighs against her mouth, tugging her closer until she falls on top of him, and then he’s kissing her fiercely, running his tongue along the seam of her lips, begging her to open for him, and when she does his tongue slides into her mouth, tasting her and she whimpers at the sensation while he groans, their harsh breaths filling the air.

She moves to take his shirt off and he stops her before she can get it past his midsection, “Emma, are you sure?”

She’s silent for a beat before she whispers her confirmation against his lips: “I don’t want the moon, Killian, I just want you.”

That’s all the confirmation that he needs before he’s tugging her own shirt off, moving to unclasp her bra before he realizes she’s not wearing one and he groans loudly at the sight, taking both her breasts into his hands.

“God, you’re so beautiful, so bloody gorgeous.” He says against the skin of her neck as he presses kisses there, and she can’t respond, can’t compliment him either because she’s too lost in the feel of him, in the way he’s touching her and she wants to drown in it, wants it to never end.

He finally gets the rest of his clothes off while he works on devoiding her of her pants, pulling her underwear down until she’s bare before him and usually she’d be slightly embarrassed by now, maybe a little shy, but not with him, never with Killian.

He kisses his way down her body, tasting her and making her come alive with all the things that he’s doing, all the ways that he’s making her sing. But she knows how to make him sing too, and when she takes him into her mouth he’s at loss for words, mumbling incoherent praise at her.

And when they come together she feels like she could fly, and when he actually sets her alight, with words of love on his lips, he follows shortly after, burying his face into her neck.

They’re both damp and sweaty, clinging to each other under the covers of his bed, and the lights on the ceiling are illuminating their sweat-soaked skin, and it’s then, while he’s looking down at her, slowly drifting to sleep, that she lets the words out, that she tells him the truth. And yes she’s giving him every ounce of power that she has, all the power that he can use to break her, but she doesn’t care anymore.

“I love you,” She whispers against his lips, eyes drooping in sleep.

He responds enthusiastically, eyes bright and grin wide (he doesn’t stop smiling for the rest of the night).

Neither of them gets to sleep until it’s well past Christmas day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come visit me on tumblr! georgianablythe16


	11. We both know why you left me here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I would update yesterday but things got a little out of hand, and I got called into work unexpectedly. But here’s the next chapter! And it’s a big one, or at least in the sense that you find out a lot of information. I hope you enjoy it and understand where Killian and Emma are coming from! Enjoy and happy Saturday :) Review if you're able, please!!

_She's been looking at colleges for months. Out of state universities, and small liberal arts schools. She wants to pursue a degree in social work, give kids like her the home she never had until recently._

_She goes to her guidance counselor, spends hours scouring college pamphlets and financial aid information. She's serious about this, and Killian's wonderful, helping her and encouraging her. He's looking into some local community colleges, says he's not sure he can even afford those, but he's going to try. He doesn't want to take out any loans, he says, and Emma might agree with him, but her dreams are too big, and she can't let the prospect of debt scare her into not pursuing them. Besides, there are worst debts to have._

_It's when April rolls around, and she's been accepted to three of the five colleges that she applied to, that Killian starts acting strange._

_At first she thinks it might be because she's seeing him less and less now that the end of the year is approaching and she's knee deep in a thousand projects, as is he, but when she confronts him about it he just kisses her forehead, and tells her everything is fine, just feels a bit under the weather, or that he didn't get enough sleep the night before._

_She brushes it off, figuring that he's probably just extra tired since he started picking up shifts at the docks with Liam._

_They still spend time together, and they're still very happy, very in love. In fact, if anything, Killian tells her he loves her more and more. When they're walking home from school, and she's in the middle of talking about colleges and deadlines and he stops her and kisses her hard, before whispering that he loves her, loves her more than anything or anyone, as he puts it. Or when they're intimate, and he can't stop staring at her, can't stop touching her, whispering the phrase over and over again into the skin of her neck, practically sobbing it out. "I love you Emma, god I love you."_

_So what comes next was never even on her radar. What comes next breaks her in two._

* * *

_She decides on a Friday. Makes up her mind and_ finally, _decides that she's going to go to NYU._

_It's five hours away, give or take, and she's nervous about going that far away from Killian, and neither of them have a car, but they can talk on the phone, they'll see each other on holidays. Plus they love one another, they can make this work._

_She tells Ruth and David that night, and she's supposed to go over to Killian's later to watch a movie. It's a rare Friday night that he's off and has the house to himself so they're both pretty excited to spend the evening together. She's excited to tell him too, and she can't wait for his reaction, can't wait to see how happy he is for her, how proud he is._

_When she gets to his house that night he's all smiles and warm words. He hugs her, kisses her, cuddles with her, mentions that he loves her more than once, and she feels so light, so happy and warm in his presence._

" _I have something to tell you," she says with a smile on her face, looking over at him where he sits against the headboard of his bed. He's got a bowl of popcorn in his lap and his hair is still slightly damp from his earlier shower, laying flat against his forehead._

" _What's that, love?" he asks through a mouth of popcorn._

_She decides it's best to just blurt it out, besides, how do you lead up to good news? He already knows she's been looking at colleges, they've talked about it extensively. So she might as well just go ahead and say it._

" _I'm going to NYU!" She says it with as must excitement as she can muster, because now that she's here, she's far more nervous about his reaction than she'd had thought._

 _What she gets is him quickly moving the bowl of popcorn aside, pulling her into his arms, and telling her how proud he is of her over and over again, the words intermixed with "I love you's" and "That's brilliant, Swan._ You're _brilliant."_

_She leaves that night, happy and warm, ready to start the next chapter of their lives together._

* * *

_It's not a week later that the other shoe drops. She's been waiting for it to do so ever since she met David and Ruth, ever since she met Killian. She should have known that no matter how good it felt, no matter how great her life was going at the moment, it could never stay that way for long. How could it? She's never had that before._

_It's a Thursday night, and usually, she'd be asleep by 1:30 in the morning on a school night, but it's exam week and her last exam is tomorrow at noon, so she'll go to sleep in an hour or so, taking full advantage of that later wake-up time._

_She hears the pebbles against her window pane and immediately knows that it's Killian. Though he's only done this twice before, once to wake her up and take her to see a meteor shower, and once more because it was the anniversary of his mother's death, and he just needed to be around someone._

_She doesn't even bother opening the window, just flicks the lamp next to the window on quickly, then turns it off once more, to let him know that she heard and she's coming downstairs._

_When she gets outside he's sitting on the top step of the porch, head bent low and legs bouncing with nervous energy._

" _Killian?" She whispers, her breath turning into puffs of cold air as it leaves her mouth. It might be April, but the evenings are still decidedly cold. "What's wrong?"_

_He looks up at the mention of his name, and she's shocked by the look of sorrow that she sees there. He looks broken, wrecked._

_She hurries to his side but he flinches away from her touch when she tries to put her arm around him._

_She tries to mask her own hurt at his reaction when she says his name once more, begging him to open up to her._

_It's minutes that go by, minutes that feel like hours before he finally offers up an explanation._

" _I've enlisted in the Navy."_

_It takes a beat for her to process the words. The Navy? He's never said anything about the Navy before._

" _I leave the day after graduation."_

_It feels like all the air has been sucked from her lungs, like she's dying on that front porch step, shriveling up because fucking hell she should have seen this coming._

" _You're leaving me?" It comes out as a whisper, and she's not sure he heard her at first, but by the way that his head swivels toward her, sharp and fast, she knows he did._

" _What, no, Swan," he reaches for her hand but it's her turn to flinch away from his touch this time._

" _That's what you just said isn't it? I don't know much about the Navy, Killian but I do know that you'll probably go to some boot camp for a few months, right? And then you'll go to some base in some far off place and I won't see you again for a year, or more!" She's shaking now, because she can't believe this, can't believe he would do this when he said he would stay. What happened to the plans they had? What happened to community college and visiting each other on long weekends or holiday breaks? What happened to them?_

" _I'll be back, Swan. I get weeks off at a time, and we'll see each other."_

" _Weeks off, Killian? Weeks that I'll be at school! I can't just throw my college life away on a whim because you'll finally be home for two weeks at a time. What happened to community college? What happened to being honest with one another? Why did you wait a week before you have to leave to tell me this?"_

_He has his head hung down in what Emma only assumes is shame but she doesn't care. She's too angry at herself for falling for his act, for believing the lies he told her._

" _Don't worry about me, Killian." She rises up from her spot on the porch, and she moves to go back inside, to leave him there without another word but he grabs ahold of her hand, palm sweaty and fingers shaking._

" _Emma, please. Wait-I-I love you." There are tears in his eyes and she can feel her heart breaking because she loves him, she does, but she can't do this, can't be with someone who lies to her, who doesn't trust her enough to open up, who keeps secrets, and most of all, she can't be with someone who leaves._

_She can't help the tears that fall down her own face at this point, all she can do is pry his fingers off her wrist, and watch as his hand falls limp to his side._

" _Have a good life, Killian."_

_She leaves before the sobs start, for her, and for him._

* * *

The moment she wakes up she wants to crawl out of her skin and possibly die. Shrivel up on the floor, so she can be rid of all her memories of the previous night.

What. The. Fuck. Was she thinking?

Killian's body is warm against her back and he's got his left arm thrown around her, pulling her tighter against him. She feels like she could vomit because it feels so right but it's so, so, wrong.

Fucking Christmas. Every year her feelings get out of control on this damn holiday. Every year she lets her loneliness and her sorrows take her to places she should not go, and this year, they took her straight to the bed of the man who wrecked her first.

She's pretty sure he's the same way, though, pretty sure that Killian also lets this holiday get the best of him, because didn't he tell her they couldn't take it any further than that one kiss? Didn't he tell her she needs to forgive him first, needs to know why he left in the first place?

They're both a couple of grade A morons, it would seem.

And fucking hell she told him she loved him. It's true, there's no doubt about that, but now he knows, and he'll probably use that against her, make her forgive him quick and easy and everything can just go back to the way it was. But that's not going to happen, she can't let that happen, so she needs to come up with a plan.

She mulls it over for what feels like hours, trapped in that bed with him, his warm breath blowing on her neck. She should get up, really she should, but she can't deny herself a few more moments in his arms, a few more moments where everything feels right, even if everything is certainly  _not_  right.

By eight she's up and out of his bed, sliding out from under his arms carefully, so as not to wake him. (She's not ready for the conversation she needs to have with him yet, not at all) She's got to be in the station by nine, David promising he'll take over her shift at noon (and also promising he's going to hire some additional help because dammit the work is getting to be too much for just the two of them)

She looks back one more time at Killian's sleeping form. He looks content, still dreaming that she's there with him, and she wishes more than anything that she could give that to him, that she could give him her body and her mind and her soul once more, but she can't. She gave him last night, and she gave him the truth, even if by tomorrow she's going to make sure he believes it was nothing but the heat of the moment.

"I love you." She whispers from across the apartment, one hand on the doorknob, and there are tears falling from her eyes, hitting the floor and splattering across her toes.

She wishes time would just give her back what she once had: an open heart, and a boundless love for the man lying in the bed she just left, a love that didn't make her stomach turn sour with fear.

She leaves before the sobs start.

* * *

"Happy Post-Christmas Day!"

The booming voice of her older brother jerks Emma from her half-sleep so much so that she nearly tumbles from her chair.

"Jesus, David," she mumbles under her breath, fixing her hair and straightening out her t-shirt. "How about no to the after-holiday cheeriness?"

"What's with you?" David asks, coming around to face her and setting down a large brown bag on her desk.

Emma elects to ignore his question, "What's in the bag?"

"Just some left-overs," he says with a shrug, before leaning back and removing his heavy jacket. He hangs it on the rack in the corner of the office before shaking some snow from his hair. "Sorry I'm a little late, but I just got off the phone with a possible new hire, so I'm guessing that means it was worth it?" He smiles at her and she can't help but smile back, she missed her brother.

"Who's the new guy?" Emma asks while digging through the bag on her desk. There's leftover Christmas ham, pie, cookies, and mashed potatoes. She'll be eating better the next two days than she has the entire year.

"His name is Will, I think his last name might be Scarlet, or Scarson, something with Scar, for sure."

Emma nearly spits out the sip of coffee she'd just taken, "Mr. Pervert?!"

"Excuse me, who?"

"You're seriously considering hiring Mr. Pervert?"

"If by Mr. Pervert you mean Will-" David looks down at the sticky note that he just retrieved from his back pocket, "Scarlet, then yes, that is who I'm considering hiring, but if he's some kind of pervert or pedophile then I guess I'll have to reconsider. I'm still waiting on the results of his background check, but Killian said he was a decent guy, or as he put it 'a good bloke' so I figured I'd look into it." David shrugs and sets the sticky note down on his desk, and he's not looking at Emma, who is silently fuming behind her own workspace.

"Since when does Killian have a say on who works at the Sheriff's station?"

David looks back at her, shock and confusion lining his face, "He doesn't, but Will put Killian down as a reference and usually when you want to hire someone you do take the word of said references into account. What is going on, Emma? Why are you so upset about this?"

She isn't really. Upset that is. Killian told her months ago that Will wasn't a bad guy, just got a little randy if he drank too much. He also told her that he had a tough life, and was just trying to get back on his feet after the recent loss of his wife and that when he first moved here he worked at  _The Jolly Roger_  for a few months. But what she was really upset about is that there was seemingly no escaping Killian Jones. He was a fixture in her life even in the parts that she previously thought devoid of his presence.

She's frustrated mostly. At first, she was just surprised that Will was trying to fix his life so much that he wanted to join the law force, but then Killian's name was brought up and well-the wound's still a little fresh.

"I'm not, I'm just-god, just never mind. I need some sleep, so I'll talk to you later."

Emma leaves the station before David can reply, and she's still got just enough anger left in her that she can go through with the plan she came up with this morning. She needs to end this with Killian, can't let it get any further. She has to really, because she may love him, but she can't be with him. Not now. Not ever.

* * *

 

He's waiting for her when she gets back to the bar. It's closed today, Killian said something about business being much too slow the day after a holiday, and that really it wasn't worth the electricity bill to keep it open for the one or two customers that would maybe, possibly come in.

So color her surprised, when she walks into the bar, and finds the lights on, music playing, and the closed sign very much staying CLOSED.

She knows what he's doing, he did this plenty of times when they dated. He's trying to surprise her, plan some big romantic gesture, and it used to work, but it's not working now.

And yet, she can still feel some of her anger seeping away the longer she stares at the bar, with it's pretty, soft glow, the smell of cedar and smoke in the air. It's then, as she's admiring the atmosphere, that she begins to recognize the notes being played. Recognizes the tune, and her heart stops still.

_Clair de Lune._

All her anger is gone in a flash, and all she feels is an overwhelming, heart-stopping amount of sorrow. Bone-deep sadness echoing throughout ever chasm of her broken soul.

She starts to cry the moment he calls her name, something jovial and  _hopeful_  present in his voice and that's when the tears really start to fall.

"Swan?" No more happiness in that voice. Just worry. Just her heart breaking.

She can hear Killian coming towards her, and she's just staring at the ground, standing right inside the entrance of the bar, the dull lighting illuminating her face just enough so that he can see her tears. And she knows he sees them because she hears his sharp intake of breath. She hears his steps hurry toward her, and the sound makes her flinch the moment he gets close enough to touch.

"Swan?" His hand settles on her shoulder, and she leans into his warmth even though her mind is screaming at her to stop, back away, and run, but she can't deny herself this comfort. She just can't.

"My darling, what's wrong?" The possessiveness of his statement has her sobbing harder, falling against him, and he cradles her head against his chest, left arm wrapped around her waist.

But it's the kiss that he places on the top of her head that shocks her out of his embrace.

" _No._ " is all she says, voice strong and resolute, and Killian looks particularly taken aback, his arms still in the same position they'd been when he'd been holding her.

She points an accusatory finger at him, shaking her head before she continues, "You don't get to touch me, not until you tell me the truth, and maybe not even then." He still looks shocked, and he's still not saying anything. "Last night was a mistake," she sees him flinch, "and I was going to come in here today and tell you that I lied, that I didn't mean it when I said I loved you, but I can't do that because it's not true. I do love you, Killian." There are tears falling from eyes again, streaking down her cheeks, silent but powerful. "But I can't give you my love, and I can't keep doing this back and forth until you tell me why you left ten years ago. Until you tell me why you broke my heart when you swore you wouldn't when you promised that you loved me."

He has his jaw clenched and his fingers wrapped into a fist, there's fury and passion radiating off him and she's not sure if it's directed at her or at himself, but she gets her answer just seconds later.

"You're right." His eyes meet hers, blue on green. "You deserve to know the truth. Will you come over for dinner tonight? Around eight? I'll tell you everything, Emma, I swear it." There's no tremor to his voice and she can tell immediately that he isn't lying, that he really will tell her everything.

She nods in response, and then he's gone, descending down to his office without a glance back at her.

* * *

 

She almost chickens out. Three times. Which is ridiculous for many reasons, but most of all because she is the one who asked for this. She's the one who wants an explanation.

But she's so scared of what that explanation might be.

For years now, for one entire decade, she has wondered why he had chosen to leave. Why he had joined the navy on a whim. Why he had left when he had promised to stay.

She knows now that her love for Killian Jones had never really gone away, even when she had "loved" Neal, loved Graham,  _liked_  Walsh. She'd never stopped loving Killian, and now he claims to have never stopped loving her.

Yet he left her. Then he almost married another woman. How could he have loved her as passionately as he claims, when he so strongly loved another?

She guesses that she'll get her answers tonight, or at least some of them.

Emma's mostly worried about what will come after the truths have been told and the long-kept secrets spilled.

Will they fall into bed again? (She admits her skin tingles at the thought) Will she hate him too much to even look at him?

These are the thoughts that worry her conscious as she makes her way over to Killian's apartment just before eight; skinny jeans and a white, comfy sweater adorning her body.

Emma doesn't bother knocking, striding through the front door with power and self-assurance.

The moment she enters the threshold of the apartment her senses are assaulted with a multitude of sights, sounds, and smells.

She can tell immediately that Killian is cooking something Italian, and her mouth waters at the scents filling the air. There's soft music playing, nothing that she recognizes, thankfully, and the whole apartment is bathed in a warm, yellow glow.

Killian is standing by the stove, stirring something in a pot and he's humming along lazily to the tune that is sweeping over the place. It doesn't seem like he saw her enter, so she makes a show of letting her shoes clatter to the floor, garnering his attention rather quickly.

"Swan! Hello, lass, would you care to help? I'm a bit in over my head at the moment."

She makes her way over to the kitchen with measured steps, "What are you making?"

"Chicken parmigiana, along with some pasta and a side salad. Care to chop up the tomatoes over there?"

Emma says nothing as she makes her way over to the cutting board, cutting the small cherry tomatoes into halves and then transporting them into a small, blue ceramic bowl. Killian starts plating their dishes almost immediately after Emma is finished cutting, throwing the salad together, and bringing the plates and the bowls to his small, but well-made dining room table. It's one big circle, made out of oak or cherry or some type of dark, beautiful wood.

"Bon appetit," he says half-heartedly, no doubt sensing her dark mood and her desire to not make this into something that it isn't. Because it's not a date, it's not a friendly get together, it's him making a meal for her before he breaks her heart in half once more.

They finish their meal, and because Killian is Killian he insists on cleaning it and the kitchen up before divulging into heavier conversation topics. She doesn't know if he's just trying to put it off for a while longer or if he really cannot rest until the kitchen is once again spotless.

Knowing him, it's probably the latter.

She tries to help but he insists that she make herself comfortable, and she's not trying to argue over something as minuscule as cleaning a kitchen when she knows that there will be far weightier arguments being had sooner rather than later, so she settles herself down into the soft cushions of his sofa, grabbing a pillow and pressing it against her chest, a physical wall rather than her usual emotional ones. She fears she might need both tonight.

She tries her hardest not to glance at the bed in the corner, her cheeks heating up in a riotous blush every time she thinks about what happened in that bed only hours ago, about how he made her feel, about the way he worshiped her body.

Luckily the return of his presence pulls her from her far more provocative thoughts, and she focuses on Killian, the Killian who's sitting in front of her with a cup of cocoa in his hand.

He presses the warm mug into her hands with a small smile, one that speaks volumes of his hesitancy and fear for the conversation that he knows is coming.

"I feel we best start with your questions, so ask away, love."

Emma sips her cocoa, as a pretense for thinking this moment over, but truthfully, she doesn't need time to think of a question, she knows what she wants to ask, knows the question that's been rattling around in her head for years, for an entire decade now.

"Why?" Is all she says at first, and he cocks his head at her, confusion marring his handsome features.

"You'll have to be a bit more specific, lass."

"Why did you leave." She says it as a statement rather than a question, cold and hard the words come out of her mouth, shoot past her lips like a bullet. "Why did you say you loved me, promised to stay with me, and then left anyway?"

Killian sighs, rubbing a hand through his hair. "It's a mite bit complicated, love."

"You said you were going to tell me the truth, Killian!" Her voice rises steadily with each syllable that rushes past her lips, and she's starting to breathe heavy because she can't believe this, can't believe that he's trying to get out of this already.

"And I will, Emma! Let me just gather my thoughts here!" There's anger in his voice too and she doesn't know if that makes her angrier or more subdued, because all she can feel is frustration so blinding that it's hard to piece together her other feelings about this.

After a few minutes, he takes a shaking breath, before turning back to her, his eyes bright and his jaw clenched hard.

"Do you remember my college search?"

It's not the response she was expecting, so it takes a few seconds for her to reply. "Uh yeah, vaguely, I guess."

Killian nods, "Do you remember your college search?"

"God, Killian, yes, what does this have to do with anything?" Her frustration is getting the better of her, morphing into vicious anger the longer that it stays unresolved.

"Our searches were quite different, were they not?"

Emma huffs, she's not interested in this game of twenty questions, she wants answers, not riddles.

"You were looking at out of state colleges, grand private schools, and large public ones. You were looking for adventure and fun and mystery, and I was looking at whatever Liam said I could look at."

"So this is my fault," She starts in, rage bubbling over, but he stops her immediately.

"No, Swan, that's not what I'm saying at all. Give me a chance to speak, hm?" He smiles at her slightly and she can feel her body relax. Can feel her muscles unclench and her posture melt.

"Regardless, after winter break, Liam told me quite clearly that most likely I wouldn't be able to afford any college at all unless I took out massive loans. I considered doing this for awhile, but in the end, I figured it was pointless, I didn't even know what I would have wanted to study, so what was the point of putting myself into debt only to end up with a degree I didn't bloody like or want?"

"It wasn't until April that Liam told me he'd enlisted in the Navy. At first, the option seemed far-fetched, out of reach. I couldn't be in the Navy, I never wanted to be, but you kept talking about going off to college, about these grand schools and all the fun you'd be having and I knew I couldn't stay in this town, Emma. Without you, and David, Mary Margaret, and Liam. I'd have no one, absolutely no one."

She interrupts him quickly, "It wasn't like I was leaving forever, Killian! I would have come back!" Emma's begging him to see some sense, to realize why his explanation still doesn't make sense to her. "You knew how I felt about being left behind, you knew! And yet you left me anyway, and you didn't even tell me until the last possible moment!"

"Do you think you're the only one who was scared of being left behind, Emma?!" Killian's practically standing now, voice raised, his hand running through his hair, pulling on the dark strands. "I had abandonment issues, too, Emma, and you were leaving as well! Going five hours away to a college in a city that I'd never even been to. We didn't have cars, we didn't have cellphones. I would never have seen you, Emma! And I'm not blaming you, Emma, bloody hell, I'm not, but you have to see where I'm coming from!" He's breathing heavily now, chest heaving in anger or frustration, she doesn't know.

"First my mother died, then my father left, then Liam tells me he's leaving for the Navy, and then, on top of all of that I was losing you too. I was scared, Emma, I was so bloody scared that you would leave, and you would find someone who was  _there_. That you would forget about me and choose instead to be with someone who could actually hold you, who could kiss you every day, and make love to you at night. I would have been thousands of miles away, more of an idea boyfriend than an actual one." He voice breaks on the last few words, his emotions getting the best of him.

He collapses back on the couch, head in his hand and legs bouncing with nervous energy.

"Why did you wait so long to tell me you had enlisted?"

"Because I was a coward," He mumbles into the space between his hunched over body.

"What were you afraid of?" She whispers, tears threatening to fall now because she's so confused, so hurt all over again.

"I was afraid of what happened, Emma." He looks up at her then, eyes blue but glassy. "That you would break up with me, ignore me, hate me. I wanted to keep you with me for as long as possible. I-I wanted you to love me for as long as possible." He wipes the sleeve of his thermal across his nose, sniffling lightly and it breaks her heart because she wishes neither of them had been so fucking stupid.

"Killian," she whispers, begging him for something that she's too afraid to ask for, but he knows her, can read her so well, and it's not a second before he's pulling her into his arms, holding her so tightly it should hurt, but all she wants is for him to hold her tighter.

He does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on tumblr! georgianablythe16


	12. Where have you been

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update! This month has been crazy busy and I’m also working on another mc fic for all of you! Hope you enjoy the chapter! Please leave some feedback if you’re able! Comments help me write faster! Love you all, xoxo.

They don’t speak for quite some time, just clinging to the comfort and warmth that the other’s body supplies them.

Emma sits, wrapped in Killian’s arms almost like a child would. Her head resting under his chin, her legs sitting splayed across his own, knees drawn up to her chest, and his arms holding her to him fiercely, as if he would not dare to let go.

They don’t speak because what would they say? How would they even begin to follow up or address the conversation they just had?

It’s exhausting, Emma realizes, as her body relaxes and begs for sleep, it is exhausting finally knowing. Finally getting the answer to the questions she has harbored for years.

Against her own will, her body begins to shut down. Her eyelids drooping, gaining so much weight and pressure that she feels it nearly impossible to keep them open. Her muscles begin to relax and her breathing to even out.

She’s aware that she’s falling asleep, but she’s helpless to stop it.

The last thing she remembers, before succumbing to her body’s desire, is Killian’s soft voice, and the press of his kiss to the top of her head, his lips against her hair.

“Sleep, my love.”

She falls asleep with a smile on her face.

* * *

 

When she wakes she wakes to the sound of a crackling fire, a dying one, yes, but a crackling one nonetheless. She wakes to a black sky and the soft glow of a flame illuminating the small apartment. There are no lights on, but she can see perfectly well, the fire doing its job even as it begins to extinguish.

It’s then, as she takes in her surroundings, that she notices her solitude. Killian is not beside her, she is no longer wrapped in his arms on the couch, but instead she is alone in his bed, while he sleeps on the sofa. She feels a sharp and involuntary pang of disappointment at the sight of him, sleeping away from her.

She knows it might be too soon to share a bed again. She knows that they need time, needs space to think over what they revealed about their pasts just a few hours ago. She knows all of this, but it doesn’t mean she wants that separation. She wants him with her, in bed, not just for pleasure and sex, but because she wants to be near him. Wants to fall asleep once more in his arms. For ten years she’s craved his comfort, and she’s sick of waking up alone.

So she pushes the soft down of his comforter away from her body, stretches her tired legs that are still confined in the deep indigo of her jeans, and slides her way over to the couch where the man she loves sleeps.

She notices immediately that he’s fidgeting quite desperately. His face contorted into some memory of pain and she suspects that he is either on the cusp of a nightmare or is slowly coming out of one. Either way, she does not feel sorry for waking him.

Knowing that she shouldn't wake him abruptly she starts soft, starts slow.

Emma brushes a wayward strand of hair off his forehead, pushing it back and carding her fingers through the thick, dark locks, before bringing her hand back down, cupping his cheek in her palm and brushing her thumb gently across the apple of his cheek, over the scar that he’s had there for most all of his life, ever since he was three and got ahold of his brother’s pocket knife.

“Killian,” she whispers, as she watches his face relax, his breathing evening out.

He whimpers softly, turning his face into her hand, his lips grazing her palm.

A soft smile graces her face at the idea of Killian finding comfort in her touch.

“Hey,” she murmurs once more, stroking the pads of her fingers against the rough hair on his face, “Killian, wake up.”

His breathing catches for just a moment, and then he’s awake, blue eyes opened wide and staring into her own.

His hand comes up to grasp her own, the one that is still lazily caressing his face.

“Emma?” He breathes, her name ending with a questioning lilt.

“Why are you sleeping here?” She queries, no tears, but sadness and confusion weaved through the words she speaks, her voice mimicking her feelings quite well.

He looks shocked by her question at first, eyes wide, but then his brows furrow, and he looks a bit confused and a bit ashamed all at once.

“I - uh,” he stammers out, “I didn’t want to assume.”

This man. This sweet, kind,  _didn’t want to assume_ , man. She wants to laugh, almost does, because no man has ever  _not_ assumed. They’ve all assumed. Assumed that they were entitled to her body, assumed that she loved them, assumed that she was theirs, that she’d never leave. They were all wrong. She’s sick of people assuming, but Killian doesn’t assume.

He never assumed she’d take the apartment, he never assumed she’d be his friend, he never assumed she’d kiss him, want him again. He never assumed, what he did was hope.

She’s got a shortage of hope in her life, but for Killian, she’s never bereft of that feeling. 

She loves him, god does she love him.

Without another word she stands up from where she’s crouching, lifts her hand from his face and watches as his eyes turn ashamed, his frown deepening. He thinks she’s angry with him, thinks she’s leaving, but instead, she holds out her hand, watches as his fingers tentatively wrap around her own, and then she pulls him up, gently, slowly, until he’s standing right in front of her.

He’s always been taller than her, even now, both barefoot and stocking covered feet, so she stands up on her tip-toes, until her eyes are level with his, and brushes her top lip carefully across his full bottom one, listens as he sighs, his body relaxing, watching as his eyes flutter close and his jaw unclenches, feels as he leans forwards, chasing her lips as she pulls away.

“Let’s go to bed,” she whispers, and there’s no seduction in her voice, no attempt at persuasion or allurement, just a plea, a plea for him to let her give him something she’s never really given anyone else. She’s thought about it sure, letting a man sleep beside her, hold her against his chest without any expectation for more, any thought of where those hands would end up by the end of the night, but every time she almost caves a wild sense of panic flies through her, the bile rising in her throat. But now, now she wants to give herself to Killian in a way she’s never given herself before. She’s given her body, her sex and her desires, but never this, never has she let anyone into this vulnerable state of herself. She’s begging for him to understand, to understand what she’s asking of him, and she starts to feel a trembling in her fingers where they’re cupping his jaw, and he must feel it too, because he grasps her shaking hand in his own, taking the tips of her fingers to his mouth, kissing each one gently, reverently, and she could cry at the way he’s looking at her.

He tugs her hand into his own, and pulls her toward his large bed, pulling back the sheets before leaving to venture to a dresser in the corner.

She’s not sure what he’s doing at first, but when he pulls out a pair of soft gray sweatpants, handing them to her with a cautious smile she can’t stop the wide grin that splits her face.

Muttering a soft thank you, Emma removes her jeans, no embarrassment to be found, and hastily pulls up the sweatpants, wanting to already be in the bed, where Killian is carefully arranging himself.

She climbs in after him, suddenly unsure of where to go, and what to do, but Killian simply smiles at her, and all her nerves relax, disappear and don’t come back.

As she lays down Killian’s arm comes up behind her, curving around her belly and pulling her back against him, her back flush against his chest, and she could weep from how perfectly they fit together, by how  _right_  this all feels.

His face burrows into the juncture between neck and shoulder, and he kisses the skin there, his lips dragging slowly against the freckles that dot her body.

“I love you, Emma.” He whispers into the dark, and she does cry then, silently, but he knows, all the same, pulling her tighter against him, tighter than she ever believed he could. “Darling, I’m sorry, don’t cry,” he soothes, voice quiet and imploring.

She stops eventually, and he kisses her wet cheek, brushing the damp strands of hair back and behind her ear.

They say nothing else, and when Emma’s nearly positive that he’s asleep, she whispers her own truth into the air, “I love you too,” she hiccups, and she feels him tighten his arm around her, the tendrils of sleep not yet having overtaken his body. He says nothing else, and they both fall asleep to the sound of the other’s breathing, and the crackling of a dying fire.

* * *

 

This time when she wakes, she wakes with a warm body pressed against her own, the hot breath of a man blowing along her neck, sending shivers down her spine.

She turns in Killian’s arms, coming face to face with his sleeping self. He looks so young in slumber, face relaxed and hair falling haphazardly across his forehead. Her fingertips reach out subconsciously, tracing the sharp edge of his jawline, tickling against the hair that resides there.

Killian hums at her touch, nuzzling closer, and Emma can’t help the small giggle that she lets out at his reaction.

His eyelids flutter at the sound of her laugh and Emma’s breath catches, hoping that she didn’t wake him up, but before long it seems that his restlessness gets the better of him, and his eyelashes flutter against his cheeks just before she’s met with the beauty of his blue gaze.

“Good morning,” she whispers on instinct, biting her lip because she feels like a schoolgirl with a crush like she doesn’t know what to say or how to act around him.

“Hmm, g'morning, love,” he gives her a sleepy smile, and his arms tighten around her on instinct, pulling her even closer to him until her nose is brushing against his own.

His hand comes up to card through the locks of her hair, brushing a few stray pieces behind her ear. “Did you sleep well, darling?”

Emma just nods, not trusting her voice to respond without embarrassing herself in some fashion, or letting him know how affected by him she is at this moment.

He hasn’t stopped smiling at her since his eyes first opened and Emma starts to squirm under his gaze, piercing and knowing.

“What’s wrong, Swan?” He asks before _she_ can even fully figure out what’s wrong. Something’s definitely wrong, she can feel it in her bones and underneath her skin, this steady vibration of wrongness.

“What are we even doing, Killian?” He pulls back at that, his hand falling from the side of her face and his eyes looking at her, broken and wide.

“What do you mean?”  
“What is this?” She asks, implores, her hands motioning between their two bodies. “What are we doing here?”  
“Whatever you want, Swan, I’m not keen to rush you into anything.”

Emma sighs, frustration permeating from her, because he’s not answering her directly and she really just needs direct right now, straightforward. “Like what, what are you not keen to rush me into?”

Killian’s looking at her in confusion, “What we had,” he says like it’s obvious. Like she should have known.

Emma pulls back even further from him, the space of the mattress between them feeling like miles rather than feet.

“What we had ended, Killian, you remember that right? What we had wasn’t enough for you.” And she knows she’s being unfair, knows that he told her why he left, and his reason was wrapped up in years of self-loathing and loneliness, just like her whole life was, but it still hurts. She loves him, yes, but she’s still recovering, slightly from what he did, but mostly from the consequences of their failed relationship. Their failed relationship that led to the failure of every relationship after. 

Killian’s looking at her in a wild mixture of hurt and shock, his mouth hanging open.

“Emma, if you cannot forgive me for leaving all those years ago then I understand. Bloody hell, do I understand because I can’t even forgive myself for doing so. But I love you, Emma, I always have, and I always will. And it would be a lie for me to tell you that I don’t want to be with you, but if you can’t have me like that right now--or ever,” he amends when he sees the look on her face, “then I understand. I just want to be near you. I’ll take anything you give me because I don’t deserve that dream life we had planned with each other, I fucked that up and I know it.”

They’re quiet for a moment, taking deep breaths and studiously avoiding one another’s gaze.

Emma feels bad immediately when she hears his confession because she does want some kind of future with Killian. Maybe not a full blown relationship, but she wants to be near him. She’s just so damaged she doesn’t know if she’s capable of anything even resembling normal when it comes to a relationship.

But he deserves to know why, and she thinks she’s finally ready to tell him.

“After you left,” she begins, and she looks up to see a flash of hurt cross his features before he puts on his best attempt at stoicism. Emma doesn’t want that, though, if she’s going to be vulnerable, she needs him to be vulnerable too, so she grasps his hand between both of hers, bringing them against her chest and giving him a weak smile. He smiles back, and she continues. “After you left I went to New York, ready to start my life at NYU, because I figured that if you didn’t want me, then the best I could do is want myself, and continue pursuing my dreams, but I was devastated, completely. I went to my first few weeks of classes with an attitude of wanting to achieve, but by the time the end of the semester rolled around I was getting B’s at best, and mostly C’s. Still passing, but not what I wanted.”

Emma takes a deep breath, not truly sure if she’s ready for the next part of this confession, but knowing she needs to get it out.

“During Christmas break, I decided not to go back to Storybrooke. Ruth was devastated, but she had David and Mary Margaret to keep her company. It was just too painful, the idea of going back, and regardless I planned to cut ties with them anyway, the entire family.” she pauses for a moment, guilt overcoming her, and she feels Killian squeeze her hand, bringing her back to the present. He smiles at her, and she feels like she has light pouring out of her fingertips, like she’s glowing and whole.

“One day, a week before Christmas I met a guy,” she feels Killian stiffen beside her, and she strokes her thumb across his knuckles, hoping to soothe him in some way. He’d always been such a jealous type, and she really doesn’t want him getting worked up over Neal of all people. “His name was Neal, and he was older,  _a lot_  older. I thought he was cool, fun, but I didn’t realize until later that what I thought was just a hobby of his, petty theft, was actually much more. He used to steal me candy bars from gas stations, pretzels from the checkout line, and I thought it was sweet, thought it was nice of him.” Emma scoffs at herself, at her own, stupid, foolish self. “I dropped out of classes, or I guess failed out would be the correct term. And I started helping him, kind of fell into the life of theft, but not anything serious. Just little things, food, and okay, the car.” Killian chuckles at that, his eyes bright, and Emma smiles right back, happy that he doesn’t judge her for her past.

“Then he got into a bit of trouble, something about a case of stolen watches, and he asked me to go and get them from his lockbox. Said we’d run away together, somewhere in Canada where the cops couldn't find him. What he didn’t tell me is that he planned to frame me for the watches.”

She hears Killian suck in an angry breath, and Emma soothes him with a tight squeeze of his hand in hers, smiling up at him, letting him know it’s okay. Or, at least it is now.

“I thought I loved him like I loved you. I wanted to be able to. To look at him and forget your face, because that meant that you weren’t it for me, that I could move on just like I had assumed you would -- and did.” she amends, watching as he nods, glad that he doesn’t try to lie to her, to assure her that he never loved another. She doesn’t need that lie, she just needs his honesty. “But as I sat in that jail cell I knew that I might have loved Neal, but it wasn’t anything like how I loved you. Like how I love you.”

“Emma,” he starts, voice broken and just on the verge of apologizing, but she’s not finished yet, and she needs to finish this, once and for all.

“The second week of my sentence I found out I was pregnant,” Killian inhales sharply, tugging on their joined hands until she goes to him, lets her fall into the safety of his arms because there’s no ending to this story but an unhappy one and he knows it. “And I knew I couldn’t keep him, Killian, I was too messed up, still am. I couldn’t be a mother, not at nineteen and not by myself. So I gave him up - let another family raise him and love him, and I know I did the right thing, I know that, but I can’t help but think that I left him just like my parents left me. That I abandoned him like I was abandoned.”

“Emma, no.” The sheer amount of vehemence in his voice gets her to look up at him quickly, eyes wide and confused. “You did what you had to do. You were abandoned yourself, by a coward of a man, and you were alone. You gave your son to a family, one that would surely love him. Your parents left you on the side of a bloody highway, Swan, you gave your son a home.”

“But what if they didn’t want him, just like no one wanted me?” She sniffles slightly, just on the verge of tears but not quite there yet.

“Oh Emma," he tugs on her hair, forcing her to look up at him, and the smile he gives her is the most beautiful thing she's seen in years, gentle and soft, and so, so filled with love. "you had people that wanted you. Ruth, David, Mary Margaret,  _me._  It just took you a little longer to find the people that were worthy of you. You’re so beautiful, love, inside and out. There is not a soul on this planet that can be likened to you, and whoever gave up the chance to be with you, to love you, well they were bloody fools. I was a bloody fool to leave you, Swan, and I never know how I’ll be able to properly atone for what I’ve done to you.” Killian shakes his head at that, a quick tear streaking down his face that he brushes away quickly on the shoulder of his shirt, smiling down at her afterward. “I’m so sorry, love,”

“Shh, it’s okay,” Emma says as she cards her fingers through his dark locks, before pressing a lingering kiss to his cheek, tasting the salt of his tears.

They sit like that, wrapped in one another’s arms for a few passing moments, before Emma steels herself, ready to get to the part of the conversation that she needs most to say.

“To make a long story short, Killian, I’ve had three serious relationships in the past ten years. The first with Neal, ending with a ten-month gig in jail and an unplanned pregnancy. The second with a police officer who grew too frustrated by my walls to continue, and the third and final with a cheating piece of shit. I haven’t opened up to anyone since Neal, and never like I did with you. I’m not _good_ at the relationship thing, and I’m not sure I ever will be - but I want to try again, with you.”

Killian’s smile is bright and wide, the skin around his eyes crinkling from joy.

“But promise me we’ll take it slow --”

“I promise, darling, anything you want, everything, I promise.”

He kisses her before she can reply, her lips parting under his own, and she feels like the broken pieces of her heart are gluing themselves back together. Slowly. Slowly but surely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on tumblr! georgianablythe16


	13. Drove straight back to the burial ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! Chapter Twelve! Fair warning that this chapter is angsty af, but I promise that it’s going to be the last chapter that has this much angst. I think that everything that happens in this chapter needed to happen so that Killian and Emma could both move forward in the relationship. But it will be mostly fluff from here on out as I begin to wind down this story. Enjoy! Please comment if you enjoyed the chapter, I can’t explain to you how much feedback helps me write faster. xoxo

_Maybe they’re moving too fast._

It’s a thought Emma has when she wakes up the next day, still wrapped in Killian’s arms. It’s a thought she pushes away, far back into the darkened depths of her mind, when his lips find her neck, peppering light kisses along her collarbone, down her shoulder and arm, until he reaches her fingertips, kissing each one carefully, slowly, making her breaths come _in_ stuttering and go _out_ soft.

She doesn’t revisit the thought. Not even when Killian makes her breakfast, chocolate chip waffles and hot cocoa (cinnamon in both, thank you very much). Not even when he feeds her bite after bite, admonishing her every time she steals a sip of his orange juice. Not even when he chases her giggles away with his lips pressed against her own, his mouth catching her smile and making it grow against his. Not even when she tastes chocolate on his tongue and smells cinnamon on his skin. Not even when he asks her to stay one more night tells her she can shower at his place, borrow his clothes, while he goes down to the bar for a few hours. And she lives next door, yeah, but she doesn’t want to leave the warmth of his apartment, doesn’t want to abandon the place that smells like him.

In the end, she doesn’t think about it. In the end she’s glad because when she falls asleep sometime around eleven, wrapped in his soft sheets and wearing one of his faded _Star Wars_ t-shirts, when she wakes up to the feel of his body against her own, the heady sensation of his arms wrapping around her stomach, tugging her back, back, back until she’s flush against his body, until their legs are tangled and she can skim her toes along his calves, eliciting a huffing sort of protest and a _that tickles, love,_ whispered in her ear, when she get’s all of that and more she lets out a sigh of relief, because she’s so beyond glad that she’s not overthinking this. Not letting her past and her walls control her happiness.

At least not yet. Hopefully not soon.

They don’t go out. No matter how much Killian wants to take her to dinner, or to the theater. It’s too much, she reasons, and she’s not quite ready for the amount of attention that the two of them would get by the townsfolk the moment they’re seen in public, holding hands, or kissing, or really even just being a drop more than amicable with one another. And it’s not because she’s ashamed of him because she’s not. She’s just not sure she trusts herself. Not sure she trusts her self-control. And she knows if someone says something awful, or gapes at them unabashedly she knows she’ll let her anger get the best of her, and she’s a deputy now, she can’t be acting like that.

So they simply enjoy the company that the other has to give. They watch movies and make dinner together. She comes to the bar on her lunch break, where they eat in his small office until they get distracted by the other’s skin, by the feel of their lips moving against one another’s. Emma straddling his lap, her hands in his hair and his on her ass, his prosthetic not even noticed.

They fall asleep in one another’s beds, Killian coming to her apartment on the nights she works late and she to his on the nights she doesn’t.

She’s happy. She’s happy living in this little bubble with him, but like always, her happy little bubble eventually bursts.

She supposes it’s her fault for not telling David and Mary Margaret. The reason for keeping her and Killian a secret isn’t one that she could ever voice aloud. Truthfully she was just scared of what saying it out loud would do, that’d it’d make it too real, and she’d freak out -- knows she would. So she just kept it all mum, and now it’s backfiring because of course it is.

“I stopped by your apartment yesterday afternoon, wanted to bring you some cookies since I knew you were off.” Is what Mary Margaret says to her as they’re preparing their weekly Wednesday night dinner. Killian has to work late at the bar, something about cleaning the coolers out after closing, and even though he hired some extra help (a man named Smee that I guess Killian knows from his time in the Navy), he’s still not able to get many nights off, so Emma isn’t missing out on spending any alone time with him tonight.

“When’d you stop by? I might have been napping, and I went grocery shopping the other day--”

“No, you were definitely home.” There’s an odd tone to Mary Margaret’s voice that gets Emma to look up immediately, catching the light dusting of pink dusting her sister-in-laws cheeks. She’s blushing. _Fuck,_ why is she blushing?

“What day did you say this was again?” Emma asks, trying to keep her voice steady as she peels potatoes, but she’s freaking out, her mind racing.

“I didn’t. Say that is, but, um--” Mary Margaret coughs, casting a sideways glance at Emma, before returning her attention back to the onion in front of her, dicing it with a precision that Emma could only hope to have. “It was Monday, around noon.”

Monday, Monday, Monday. Emma’s mind scrambles to _think_. What had she been doing on Monday at noon? She knows she had the day off, and she knows she slept in pretty late, and she _knows_ she spent a better part of the afternoon grinding down on Killian’s lap in his office chair, as they made out like horny teenagers. She spent the better part of the afternoon with her shirt discarded across the books on the floor, and one bra strap hanging down her arm, her jeans unbuttoned and his hand down the front of her pants as she sucked on the soft skin of his neck, turning it purple and blue under the onslaught of her tongue and the scraping of her teeth, his head buried in the space between her shoulder and neck, sucking his own marks there and whispering encouragements.

_That’s a lass._

_Come on love, let go._

_That’s right, that’s what I want._

Fuck.

“If you have a point, get to it, Mary Margaret.” The words come out harsh and bitter, Emma’s eyes welling with the promise of tears. She doesn’t know why she’s so angry, or why she’s so upset. Maybe it has to do with the fact that she can never keep anything to herself for long without her business being plastered all over the town, without her life being talked of in soft and scolding whispers between bent heads and shared breaths.

“I saw you and Killian together.”

And there it is. The confirmation Emma needed to know that nothing would be the same again. She couldn’t even have a _month_ to enjoy what she and Killian had before her own family found a way to usurp that happiness.

Emma drops her peeler on the counter, the metal clanging against the stone, as she steps back, steps away from her sister-in-law and, hopefully, from this situation. She’s about to make a beeline for the door, but she should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

“Emma, wait! What are you so upset about?” Mary Margaret seems genuinely confused, and a glance back toward her tells Emma that she isn’t just confused, she’s hurt.

“I just don’t understand how this could happen. I just don’t understand how you could invade my privacy so badly!” Emma’s face feels hot and her body feels hot and she feels hot all over, the very air around her charged with anger and embarrassment, confusion and desperation.

“Emma I didn’t mean to!” Mary Margaret sets her knife down and walks over to where Emma is standing, her arms outstretched and eyes pleading.

Emma scoffs, looking up at the ceiling instead of at her sister-in-law. She’s afraid if she looks she’ll start sobbing, and then she really won’t know how to explain herself, or these emotions. “You’re kidding, right? How does that make any sense?”

“I dropped by to give you the cookies and I thought I heard your voice from downstairs. I had never been down there, and I didn’t know it was Killian’s office. I thought maybe it was some type of storage space and you were just down there getting some of your belongings or something, I don’t know.” Mary Margaret takes a breath, her words coming out sharp and pleading. “But obviously I was wrong, and I only went down the first few steps before I caught a glimpse of,” she pauses, her face a wild shade of red, and Emma’s annoyance meter skyrockets. “You know,” Mary Margaret ends, her hands moving in a weird circular gesture that Emma’s guessing is supposed to represent what she and Killian were doing.

“Dry-humping, almost-fucking, pick a phrase Mary Margaret and stick with it, we’re not in middle school, and actually I think twelve-year-olds would have an easier time saying those words than you would.”

If possible, Mary Margaret blushes more, but Emma can tell there’s a hint of anger behind the red now.

“Knock it off, Emma, I’m not your enemy here.”

“Oh, you’re not, are you? Then what are you, my friend? My family? Because the last I checked friends and family members don’t intrude one another’s private lives!” They’re both shouting now, arms raised, hands clenched. She’s never fought with Mary Margaret like this. Sure they’ve had disagreements over the years but never like this.

David picks this moment to come through the door, his body not even fully in the threshold before he’s speaking, his tone clipped and hushed.

“What the hell is going on? I can hear you two from the first floor!”

Mary Margaret and Emma both look at David, anger radiating from where they stood.

“Ask your wife, apparently she’s got all the juicy details,” Emma says as she walks towards the door, grabbing her coat on the way out.

She walks home in a daze, the cold air numbing her face and her ears, her forgotten beanie back at Mary Margaret and David’s, her hands shoved deep in her pockets.

When she gets back to the bar she’s hoping, for the first time in weeks, that Killian is in the back somewhere, maybe down in his office. She’s hoping, beyond hope, that she won’t see him, but when has anything ever really worked out for her?

He spots her the moment she walks through the door, his brow furrowed and his eyes questioning. He knows something is wrong, and she wishes she had the energy and the desire to tell him everything, but right now she just needs to be alone, because she’s going to break down in just under five minutes and she really doesn’t want to have to explain why through the onslaught of tears.

So she just angles her head down, stares at her feet as she makes her way to the back staircase, and once she’s out of sight, practically sprints up the wooden steps, reaching her apartment in record time and dropping to her bed the moment the door clicks shut behind her.

She just needs to think, fuck does she need to think.

But she can’t because her sheets smell like him, and his toothbrush is sitting on her kitchen counter, his socks lay discarded at the end of her bed. She can’t think because even when he’s not here, he’s still here. He’s in everything because he’s become a steady force in her life. It’s been little more than three weeks and he’s already such a huge part of her daily life and routine.

How the fuck did she let this happen again? God, she never wanted this. She loves Killian, and she wants to spend time with him, be with him, but she never wanted this, wanted to depend on him like this. She can’t depend on him to make her happy because that never works with guys, never works because they leave, and he did that before. Sure, he promised he wouldn’t leave again, said he was in it for the long haul, over and over again he’s reassured her, but she can’t trust him fully because she’s still so _scared._ She’s fucking terrified actually, and that’s why she wanted to keep this whole thing, their relationship or whatever they wanted to call it, between her and Killian. Telling people makes it too much because people have expectations.

Mary Margaret and David have a fairy-tale fucking romance. Middle school sweethearts turned high school sweethearts turned college sweethearts turned forever sweethearts. They went the traditional route, and Emma’s never been traditional. She can’t deal with the pressure of traditional. She can’t sit at the dinner table with David and Mary Margaret and talk about her relationship, can’t go out on regular dates that lead to marriage that lead to family. She knows what they want for her, and she can’t give it to them.

She can’t give that to Killian.

As she lays on her bed, face first into the pillow that he sleeps on, she realizes what she has to do. She has to end this. She can’t let it go on because there’s no ending to this, and she can’t give Killian what he wants. He was _engaged_ for fuck’s sake, of course, he wants marriage and children and a stable home life. He wants commitment, and the most committed Emma can be is afternoon dry-humping in an office chair.

She falls asleep after locking the door, but unfortunately for her, she’s still on the cusp of wakefulness when Killian comes up from the bar and knocks softly on her door, his whispered _Emma, darling, are you alright?_ followed by a sigh and the retreating sound of his footsteps finally doing the trick, as silent tears fall down her face, and she succumbs to her body’s desire for rest.

* * *

 

She supposes that you could call this being back to normal. If normal means avoiding Killian in every way possible. He texts and calls, asks her to come eat lunch with him, or what time she’s going to be back from work. Invites her over to dinner, asks if she’s interested in watching a movie.

But it’s been weeks and she’s just sent cryptic replies, all different, but all with the same message: no. She packed a lunch, she’s not sure when she’s getting off, she’s gonna call it an early night or she simply doesn’t reply, which is answer enough it would seem.

It’s hard, and she feels awful, really she does. His nightmares have started back up, every night now and she desperately wants to go to him, wants to lay in the comfort of his arms and let him know that it’s okay, that she’s here, but she can’t. She has to be strong, she has to let him go. It sucks now, but it’s for the best.

She misses him desperately, though, and it’s far more excruciating than it had been when he first left, all those years ago. She missed him then, had cried for days, for weeks, even months over their breakup, but now she just feels numb. She craves his touch more than she’s willing to admit, but it’s not just the physicality of their relationship that she misses. It’s the way they spent hours talking, laughing, smiling at one another. It’s the way he ducks his head when he’s embarrassed or scratches behind his ear. She misses his nervous tics and the way the skin around his eyes crinkles when he laughs. She misses his innuendos and his playful leering, the way he'd bite his lip when she did something he found particularly alluring. She misses how he sounds when he wakes up, his accent thicker, his whispers deep and seductive. She misses him.

Which is why, she guesses, she gets sloppy.

She was having trouble sleeping. She’d spent the last month sleeping in the cradle of his arms and now that she’s not her insomnia is back full force. She fell asleep last night (or this morning, to be more accurate) around four a.m. Her shift at the station starts at eight and she slept through her 7 a.m. alarm, meaning, beyond anything, that she wasn’t able to leave early enough to avoid Killian.

Emma walks out her door at 8:05, her head bent down as she texts David to let him know that she’s running late but she’ll be in soon when she collides directly into a solid form.

She knows it’s Killian the instance her skin touches his, electricity traveling down her spine and settling in her toes, making her anxious with the need to kiss him, to kiss every inch of his beautiful skin. (She never got a chance to do that, to taste him _everywhere._ )

His hand and prosthetic settle on her arms to steady her, and she wants to lean into his touch, but instead she flinches out of it.

“Sorry,” she mutters, head still downcast because she refuses to look at his face. If she meets his eyes she’ll break and she can’t break. Not now.

She tries to sidestep around him, but his hand on her arm squeezes tight, holding her in place.

“Why are you doing this?” Is all he asks and there’s a pain to his words that makes her heartbreak, makes her want to fall forward and bury her face against his chest, kiss away all the pain.

“Doing what?”

He sighs, and he sounds so tired, and she knows if she were to look up at him she’d see bags under his eyes, worry clouding the blue, sadness clouding the worry.

He tilts her chin up with his index finger, bringing her gaze up to meet his own and she’s sad to say that she was right. He looks miserable.

“Why are you avoiding me, Emma? What did I do?” His voice rises from calm yet confused, to panicked and rushed. “Just tell me what I did, love, _please_. I can fix it, let me bloody fix it, please.” His eyes are bloodshot and watery, and she’s sure her eyes tell the same story. The story of sleepless nights and excruciating loneliness. The story of how much they miss one another. Too much.

“I--I can’t.” Is all she’s able to stutter out, her eyes settled resolutely on the space over his shoulder, not meeting his gaze.

He releases his grip on her the moment the words come out, taking a few steps back.

“Why?”

She shrugs, “I don’t do commitment. I’m sorry if you,” she swallows, gathering her strength to get the next few words out. “I’m sorry if you got the wrong impression of this, but it, uh,” there are tears in her eyes, and she’s fighting against them, knows she needs to get out of here quick, “It was never meant to last.”

“Bullshit.”

She looks up at him, finds his arms crossed and his eyes cold. He’s pissed, clearly.

“What does that mean?”

“It means all of that,” he waves his prosthetic out in front of him, “Is bullshit. Remember that morning, about a month and a half ago, when you told me you wanted to try?”

She knows what he’s talking about, has thought about that morning over and over again the past few weeks. Had cried over her own vulnerability, and how she lost the ability to be that way weeks ago.

“Maybe I dreamed it because _this_ isn’t trying, Emma. This is you avoiding me instead of telling me what’s wrong and that’s sure as hell not bloody trying!” He’s shouting now, and Emma wishes she could be angry at him for that, but she just can’t find it in her. Not anymore. “Just,” there’s a catch to his voice and Emma looks up to find him staring at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. Her heart deflates because fuck, she made him cry. This sweet, wonderful man. She’s wrecked him, just like she wrecks everything. “Just tell me what’s wrong, Emma, please, god--just _please_.”

They stand in silence for a while, both trying desperately not to stare at the other.

“I’m late for work, Killian, I’m sorry,” she says through the lump in her throat, through the tears in her eyes. She doesn’t know what else to say, really.

Killian scoffs, “Is this it then, Emma? Are you calling this off? Us?”

Emma just nods, unable to speak, staring down at her boots shuffling against the wood beneath her.

“Right. Well,” he coughs loudly, clearing his throat, and Emma knows he’s holding back his emotions, “Have a good day, then, Swan.” and then he’s gone, his apartment door slamming shut behind him, and Emma just stares at the old wood, the gold number 1 staring right back at her.

Fuck this morning.

* * *

 

Emma gets nothing but radio silence from Killian for the next few weeks. Which is, obviously, understandable.

She doesn’t even hear his usual reactions to the nightmares. No cursing, no whimpering, no thrashing about: nothing. She wonders if maybe he just got over them, but when she catches him coming up from the basement steps in the morning on her way out to work, she thinks the more likely explanation is that he’s been sleeping down in his office.

She feels awful, and she misses him, and she wishes she could fix things but she just can’t. This is the best option for the long run. It hurts, god does it hurt right now, but by the time she moves out when her lease is up (only 7 more months) he’ll be happy she ended this. Happy that he’s able to move on and find someone that is less broken than she is. Someone who’s easier to love and who loves easier in return.

She hasn’t been back over to David and Mary Margaret’s since the incident that started this all. It’s not because she’s still angry, she’s apologized to both of them multiple times now. She just can’t be around people right now, especially her brother and sister-in-law, who are always trying to help everybody. She doesn’t want help, she just wants time to grieve.

So they give it to her--until they don’t.

It’s a Friday night, and Emma’s got the whole weekend off, Monday too. Something about her general attitude and demeanor prompting David to decide that it would be best if she stayed home for a little bit, get some rest as it were. Besides, he’s got Will to help him now, so neither of them have to work the crazy hours and shifts that they had to when she first started.

She tries to relax, to rest, but the silence from Killian’s side of the wall is starting to drive her crazy. She needs to leave, has to get out of her apartment. But a quick call to Ruby and Elsa tell her that both her friends are busy with their respective significant others. She’s alone, like usual, and it’s driving her insane.

Before she can rip her own damn hair out there’s a knock on the door that shocks her senses into awareness, like she’s been dipped in ice water, the hair on the back of her neck standing up in panic. She chides herself for her ridiculous reaction, even though all she can think is _it’s Killian, it’s Killian, it’s Killian._

She doesn’t know why this is the first conclusion she jumps to because it seems a little ridiculous being that she hasn’t really seen Killian in weeks, ever since That Morning, only catching glimpses of him as she’s come in and out of the building. Why would he be trying to contact her now?

When she opens the door she’s surprised to see Mary Margaret standing there, a plate of cookies balanced in her hands.

“Uh, hi?” Emma says, not trying in the least to hide her confusion.

“Emma! Can I come in?”

“Um, yeah, sure,” Emma starts to say, but Mary Margaret is already through the door, setting the plate of cookies down on Emma’s crowded kitchen countertop. Emma wouldn’t call herself a slob. She cleans when it’s dirty and tries to make her living space presentable, but she’s been sorely slacking on the household chores for the past, well, month or so, and her cheeks brighten considerably at Mary Margaret’s presence and view of what this breakup has done to Emma.

“I was just about to clean up,” Emma starts, but the other woman is looking at her sharply, no room for argument in her gaze. “What?”

“You’re miserable Emma.” It’s not a question, and it’s not a suggestion that she start speaking, Mary Margaret is stating it as a fact.

“No. I’ve just been busy.”

Mary Margaret scoffs, “Come on, Emma, don’t lie to me. Tell me what happened. David said he ran into Killian the other day in the grocery store, he said that Killian looked horrible like he hadn’t slept in weeks. And when he asked about you, and how you were, Killian wouldn’t even look at David anymore, just made some excuse to leave and practically sprinted out of the store.”

Emma’s heart breaks at the story (if it’s possible that it could break more) she didn’t want to hurt him, but she supposes it was inevitable.

“What happened, Emma?” Mary Margaret approaches Emma’s still form, laying her hands on either side of Emma’s crossed arms, squeezing imploringly.

“I ended it,” she breathes, her voice cracking just slightly.

“Oh, Emma,” Mary Margaret pulls her into a hug, rubbing her hand up and down her back in a comforting motion. “Why, honey?”

“It never would have worked out,” Emma sniffs, “I’m too broken. I can’t even handle my family finding out about our relationship without freaking out. I can’t give him what you and David have. I can’t be a wife or give him kids, I can’t do it. I’m not the settling down kind of girl, never have been.”

“Why do you think he wants that?” Mary Margaret asks, her voice gentle and not accusing.

“Because he was engaged once before,” she feels Mary Margaret stiffen against her briefly, before relaxing once more, “You didn’t know?” Emma asks, pulling back to look at the other woman’s face.

“No, I--well I heard the town gossip,” she admits, “but I’d only heard her called his mistress. Nothing more. I had no idea they’d been engaged.”

Emma nods, “The point is he was. He wanted all of that. He wanted marriage and a happy home. I can’t give that to him, I’m too broken.”

She feels Mary Margaret sigh, before leading her down towards the small sofa against the wall, settling down and pulling Emma down as well, still hugging her.

“First off,” Mary Margaret says after some time, “You’re not too broken for anything. If you want marriage or children or a happy home life and years of monogamy you can have those things. You are not too broken, Emma, and even if you’re a little broken, so is everyone else. I bet Killian feels broken every day but does that stop you from loving him, from wanting him?”

Emma shakes her head, sniffling once more. She’s sick of crying. She hasn’t cried this much in years.

“Exactly. You are worthy of love Emma, please stop thinking that you aren’t. Secondly,” she pauses, gathering her words no doubt, and Emma waits patiently, enjoying the comfort of being held, though it only makes her more aware of how much she misses being held by Killian. “I don’t know Killian as well as you do, Emma, but I still know him. I’ve seen him around you. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, even before your relationship started up again. He loves you, Emma, I’m sure of that. And no matter what Killian wanted once before, I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that all he wants now is _you._ ”

Emma chokes back a sob, wanting desperately to deny the words, but she can’t get anything out, and Mary Margaret only holds her harder, her grip tightening.

“Stop being your own worst enemy, Emma, and look around you. Look at all the people that love you. You are exceptional, and Killian knows that. He loves you, and you love him, so get up, do some laundry, clean the apartment, think it over, and I’m not going to tell you how to fix this thing with Killian, just give yourself some time, and if you really love him, if you really miss him, well, let him know.

Emma nods against Mary Margaret’s shoulder. She’s not sure how she’s going to fix this, but she knows she needs to. Knows she needs to talk to him.

She loves Killian, and he deserves to know that.

* * *

 

Emma stays holed up in her apartment for one more day. She finishes her laundry, cleans the small space, washes the dishes, dusts the windowsills. But the one thing she hasn’t done is talked to Killian.

She’s going to, she really is, but she just needs time to think it over, to create and rehearse the speech that she’s going to say to him.

By eight o’clock on Saturday night she’s finally worked up the courage to go talk to him. She leaves her apartment and takes the few steps over to his own apartment door, knocking tentatively. There’s no answer, and she knocks twice more, each time growing louder and louder.

Still no answer.

She’s confused until she remembers that it’s Saturday night, of course he’s down at the bar, but when she reaches the bottom of the staircase, her head swiveling back and forth and trying to catch a glimpse of him, she finds the loud space devoid of Killian.

She spots Smee behind the counter and approaches after he’s done pouring a round of shots for a couple of rowdy college girls from the next town over.

“Hey,” she says quietly, catching the small man’s attention immediately. He looks at her in distaste. “Is Killian here?”

Smee rolls his eyes, “No, he left yesterday morning. Gone to Portland for the weekend. Don’t expect you to know that, though, since you only talk to him when you need a good kiss.”

Emma ignores the obvious dig at her character, she doesn’t have time to get angry, she just wants to figure out when she can see Killian.

“When will he be back?”

Smee shrugs, “Don’t know. Probably Sunday, after all, that’s when all the pretty girls are going home early, work the next day and whatnot.”

Emma feels her insides freeze. Her blood running cold. _Pretty girls?_ Killian went to Portland for pretty girls?

Her heart’s breaking and she feels like she could throw something all at once, but she forces herself to calm down, to get out of the situation without throwing a fit.

“Oh, okay, well,” she says nothing else, backing away slowly and then practically sprinting up the stairs, locking herself in her apartment and falling against the door, her breaths coming in heavy and hard.

All she can think is that she lost him. She lost him for good all because she was too scared. Too afraid to find out where they were headed. Too frightened of how serious they could be. She’s doubted herself for so long, that she finally made him doubt her too.

All she wants is to be close to him, to apologize and tell him she loves him. She loves him. She needs to talk to him, has to talk to him the moment he comes back.

She knows she might be acting a little crazy when she breaks into his apartment, not minutes later, picking the lock carefully, but she doesn’t care. She needs to be the first person he sees when he gets back, needs to explain herself, and if he doesn’t want her anymore, well then, he doesn’t want her anymore. Wouldn’t be the first time somebody didn’t want her.

The first thing she notices upon entering his apartment is the mess. She thought her apartment was bad, but Killian’s is far worse. Dirty clothes and dirty dishes, an unmade bed and opened drawers, ashes from the fireplace littering the wooden floor.

But the worst part is the large number of empty rum bottles crowding the floor, peeking out from under blankets and beneath forgotten shirts. If she were to venture down to his office she's sure she'd find a similar view.

“Oh, Killian,” she whispers to herself, her voice carrying across the empty apartment, “I'm so sorry.”

She can feel a fresh wave of tears coming on, so she heads for the bed, her body begging her for sleep. She collapses on top of the rumpled comforters, finding one of his discarded sweatshirts hidden in the mess, and she clutches at it desperately, whimpering at the scent of _him_ that clings to the wrinkled fabric.

She falls asleep easily, the almost-presence of Killian lulling her into a dream where he's here and where she's never alone again.

* * *

 

She wakes some time later to the feeling of a hand on her face, an idle thumb rubbing back and forth across the apple of her cheek.

“Emma, darling?”

It's Killian. She knows it before she opens her eyes, but the moment she does she's met with the view of his face, brow furrowed in concern and his blue eyes bright in the light from his bedside lamp.

“Killian,” she croaks out, throwing her arms around his neck, pulling him to her. “Killian, Killian,” she sobs against the warm skin of his neck.

“Emma, love, what's wrong? Are you hurt?” She nearly breaks at the concern in his voice, the worry. She's been so awful to him and yet he still treats her like the most precious thing in the world. She just hopes beyond hope that she can convince him to stay, to try once more.

“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” Is all she says, not answering his question. She can't process much else other than he's _here_ and he needs to know how she feels. “I love you, I'm sorry.”

He sighs at her words, “I love you, Swan.” And that's all she needs. She pulls back from their embrace to cup his face in her hands, the wiry hair on his face so much longer than she’d ever seen it. She kisses him before he can say much else,

It's a fierce thing, this kiss, hot and heavy, harsh breaths mingling with one another's. She presses her tongue insistently against the seam of his lips and he opens for her immediately.

He moves his body so that he's no longer kneeling beside her on the wood floor, but that he's hovering above her, his hand gripping her hair so tightly it would normally hurt, but she can't feel anything but the heady sensation of his body pressing hers into the mattress, his lips moving harshly against her own, teeth clacking and tongues mingling.

He pulls back to breathe but Emma doesn't let him get far, pulling his head back down, right to her neck and he sucks on her skin greedily, his tongue licking its way up to her lips once more.

“Killian,” she whines against his mouth, and the sound of her voice seems to pull him from this spell. He comes up sharply, his body angling away from hers, a flash of pain at his rejection echoing through her chest.

 “Emma,” he says between laboring breaths, “Emma we need to talk.”

She nods, sitting up in the bed and leaning back against the headboard.

He stares at her for a few minutes before continuing, “What changed your mind?”

Emma swallows, avoiding his gaze while she tries to gather her words, twisting the sheets in her hands.

“I missed you. And not like ‘oh I missed you, let's catch up sometime soon,’ but like ‘I missed you so much I couldn't breathe.’ Or ‘I missed you so much that I realized I never wanted to spend another day apart from you again.’” She's still not looking at him, her cheeks red, “I just really missed you, and I love you, Killian, so much. And if you don't want me anymore I understand. Because I can't give you everything you want because I'm so scared all the time, and--”

He kisses her before she can finish, pulling her roughly towards him until she's straddling his lap, her hands buried in his hair. He pulls away too soon for her taste, a whine escaping her throat as his lips leave hers. He chuckles at the sound, pressing one more soft kiss to her swollen lips.

“I love you, Emma Swan,” he says, his forehead pressing hard against her own, his hands gripping her hip tight. “You give me everything I could ever want simply by existing. Simply by gracing me with your presence. I need nothing more from you. I only need you. Always.” A hiccuping sob escapes her, a few residual tears falling down her cheeks. He wipes them away as they come, smiling down fondly at her, “Do you understand?” He asks and Emma nods, giving him a watery smile.

Killian smiles back at her, before kissing her forehead, then her cheeks, the tip of her nose, and finally her lips. “I love you,” he whispers against her mouth, all raw emotion and need in his words.

His kisses turn hungry fast, and she loathes to refuse him, meeting him kiss for kiss, her teeth nipping at his lower lip, pulling a growl from his lips.

Eventually, their kissing turns to clothes off, and inhibitions gone, as they lose themselves in their passion and love for one another, finally drifting off to sleep in the early hours of the morning, the sun just seeping through the curtains.

She sleeps soundly for the first time in weeks, nestled up against Killian’s chest.

* * *

 

Emma wakes sometime late in the morning. Confusion and tiredness addling her brain so that she’s unaware of where she is. Then she feels the warmth of a body next to her and the slight chill that accompanies a lack of clothing and she remembers everything, a slight blush creeping up her cheeks.

Killian’s thrashing around in the bed beside her, sweat dampening his body, and his hair sticking to his forehead. He’s whimpering a bit in his sleep and Emma knows immediately that he’s having a nightmare.

“Killian,” she whispers, sliding her hand up his bare chest and bringing it up to cup his cheek. “Killian,” she whispers again, hoping he’ll wake up.

His eyes open instantly, his gaze flying wildly around the room as he comes out of his nightmare and back to reality.

His eyes eventually land on her, and he’s moving in one fluid beat.

“Emma,” He says against her shoulder as he crushes her to his chest.

He’s peppering kisses against her bare shoulder, her collarbone, her neck.

“Killian, Killian, Killian,” she says over and over again, not knowing if she’s trying to comfort him or plead with him to stop and breathe.

He’s not having any of it, though, bringing his face out of her shoulder and kissing her like he’s drowning and she’s a breath of fresh air.

She kisses back just as fiercely, biting his bottom lip and pulling it into her mouth, sucking on it lightly while he groans above her.

“My darling,” He whispers against the skin of her neck, biting down softly and then soothing the ache with the sweet caress of his tongue.

Emma’s the one who’s whimpering now, squirming in the sheets as he works her up, making her body flush with heat and the awareness of him.

“I’ve missed you, my beautiful Swan.” He says as he makes a path down her neck to the top of her breasts with his mouth, kissing her reverently, adoringly.

“Killian,” She whines, as he sweeps down and mouths at her breast, sucking pointedly on one peak, before switching to the next.

“Did you miss me, my love?” He kisses down her stomach, abandoning her breasts to the chill of the air.

She whimpers in response, begging him to go where she wants, to just get on with it, even though she loves this. Loves the way he catalogs every inch of skin that makes her sigh and squirm and beg for more. Loves that he takes his time with her like she’s the most beautiful treasure he’s ever seen, and he wants to know every piece of her.

Emma has her eyes closed, but they open suddenly when Killian stops his slow procession down her body.

He’s staring up at her from his place between her legs, his mouth hovering over her navel.

“Answer me, Swan.” He’s got a playful glint in his eyes, a smirk playing across his face.

Feeling defiant, she shakes her head, screwing her lips shut.

He looks surprised at her refusal to respond, his eyebrows shooting up, before he pounces on her, his lips pressed insistently against hers, stealing the breath from her lungs.

She kisses back with everything she has, their tongues and teeth clashing together, and it should be painful, but it’s not. It’s everything she could possibly want; it’s Killian.

“I missed you, I missed you.” She mumbles against his lips, and the words only encourage him further, his mouth pressing down harder against hers, his teeth dragging her bottom lip into his mouth before he sucks on it, like it’s the sweetest treat he’s ever tasted.

“Killian,” she whines, as he makes his way down her body again, nipping and licking at her skin along the way, paying special attention to the constellations of freckles that adorn the pale flesh. “Killian,” she says once again, more insistently this time, until he looks up at her, his hair disheveled and his lips swollen. He looks wrecked, and she smiles at the sight, pride surging through her at the notion that _she_ did this to him. _She_ made him look like that.

God, does she love him.

“Go out with me.” She says, her voice steady, no question to be found, no doubt.

He looks shocked, his mouth dropping open and she giggles at the sight, carding her fingers through the dark locks of his hair.

“What?”

“Go out with me. To dinner or something, I don’t care, just--” she bites her lip, “go out with me?”

He pounces on her once more, his lips hard against her own.

“Yes. Yes, of course, I’ll go out with you, Emma. Yes.” He says the words between kisses, joy radiating out of every pore and every word. She laughs against his lips and he follows suit.

They make love slowly, whispering words of love into the other’s skin, their breathy gasps and moans interspersed with giggles and laughs, bright eyes and smiles, as they hold one another tighter than normal.

She’s not afraid anymore, not of him, not of _them._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hi on tumblr!! Georgianablythe16

**Author's Note:**

> Review please? :)


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